My 10 Point Platform

Through my two years here I have thought of many ways to help improve how DePaul functions and how the SBA relates to the Students. For too long it has been an organization that students either do not know anything about or feel they have no impact on. For God sakes, we are going to be working in the real world. We are not children anymore. With this in mind, here is what I would like to do as your SBA president.

1. Amend the Constitution to require that all future amendments be voted on by the student body and NOT solely the SBA.

• There is no reason, with a school our size and of our caliber, to not allow students to vote for amendments. Currently, there is no representation of the student body in any of the amending process and we just recently were able to mandate a review period for students before amendments are voted on. 

2. Amend the Constitution to require a full disclosure of the budget.

• This is a long debate that has been going on since I got here. Listening to both sides I see the problems inherent in this. The current SBA feels that publishing the details for each student group will lead to infighting about who gets more money. While I do agree that this problem might occur, I believe the students are mature enough to handle it. I would like to publish the budget, not with how much each group gets, but with how much each group asks for and then how much they get. This way, the student body may see what groups are asking for and what they are getting. It will be a way to remind groups that if they dont request the funds than they wont get them.

3. Hold a Student Referendum to get a student vote on how much they feel should go to SBA from their tuition.

• I have already talked to Dean White about this and we cannot affect next years budget, but we can impact the planning for 2012-2013 and onwards. I would like students to sit down and look at how much money goes into the SBA and how much things cost. The other law schools SBA's receive more money then ours and can do much more. Ideally, I would like to mandate that any increases in revenue must go to Student Groups and not to subsidizing events that a majority of students cannot go to. Either way, I plan on holding a referendum on this issue to see what the entire student body thinks about this.

4. Revitalize the SBA Liaisons and create a Constitutional Position.

• I would like to amend the constitution to give SBA voting rights to the SBA Liaisons from each student group. Admittedly, there would also need to be some ground rules in place, like you cannot hold this position in more then one group. I feel that this way, the student groups will be represented in the SBA's decisions, unlike now where there is no concrete system of input.

5. Expand the SBA Budgetary Committee, through a Constitutional Amendment, from the current three (President, Vice President, and Treasurer) to five (President, VP, Treasure, Social Chair, Dean's Advisory Chair).

• This way all decisions on the budget will have a broader base to give input and will hopefully represent more of what the student body wants.

6. Continue pushing with DAC to improve the school and facilities.

• This year has been an extremely productive year for DAC and we have gotten a lot of things done. There are still many issues that need to be addressed, but  I am ready to continue working with the New Dean and the New DAC chair to push forward on them.

7. Create an organized, central calendar for all student groups to post and plan their events.

• This way student groups can see what is going on and if there is a conflict with the events they host. This will hopefully prevent the odd lunch clumpings where one day there might be four events and the day before and after has nothing.

8. Push the Deans to stop scheduling so many classes in the 4-5:15 slot or to have evening classes start later.

• This is extremely detrimental to the Evening students and the student groups. There are 50 minutes given to groups for lunch events, but only 30 minutes tops given for evening events before classes start. This desperately needs to be changed, either by having evening class start later or by having the afternoon classes not extend into this window.

9. Working with the Student Volunteer leaders in the student groups and in SBA to create a calendar and web site that posts all volunteering events with links and information.

• Volunteering is an essential part to being a good citizen and this school has always had a history in it. This way we are not given the option of one event every one or two months, but a whole list of events that we can fit around our schedules.

10. Continue listening to the Student Body for new ideas and solutions to current problems.

• I know that there are still many problems with the school, whether it is the elevators or how hot the library can get, but I am sure that we can overcome them and find solutions. No matter how small the problem is, there is nothing I do not want to know about.