On the Record: UA for the People

Daily Pennsylvanian: What are the biggest issues the UA should tackle this year and how should the UA deal with them? Jeffrey Lichtman: The first issue is that we have to no longer be isolated from the student body, and I think that if we try to address any issues and we don't have that connection and that accountability factor, than we will more or less be falling on deaf ears. So, as resolved, I think that our number one priority is re-immersing ourselves back in the student body. We will be doing that by setting up an outreach system where we will be attending meetings of captive audiences where we can attend their meetings and that will accomplish three things. One, it will establish a communication link. Two, it will get some feedback on issues that we are addressing and see what students feel about it. And three, give us an opportunity to hear about issues and concerns from students so we can use that and incorporate that into our activities. Once that is set up, I think issues that I can foresee being important are: one, the protection of need-blind admissions; two -- these are new issues by the way -- we will continue with old issues, but the new issues we will be focusing on will be need-blind admissions, recreational facilities, bringing PennWatch to be truly a student body effort, improving the awareness of the JIO processs so people don't go into the system fearing it. There will be other issues we will address, but more than anything trying to unify the student body under our auspices. DP: Members of the UA have obsessed themselves with the amount of respect the organization receives. How do you plan to increase the amount of respect of the UA? Lichtman: I think that this sort of outreach system . . . currently administrators look at us and whenever we come to them, they say here are 33 students that are speaking about an issue. They really don't see us connected to the student body, and this system will grant us that respect or will enhance that respect because we will be able to walk into a room and say not only does the Undergraduate Assembly feel this way about this issue, but we have talked with students, we have talked with people who are really affected by this situation and this is the way they feel. And when we are speaking for them our respect will increase. And I think that will exist both in three different levels: through publicity with the press, with the undergraduate student body itself, as well as back to the adminstrators. DP: As treasurer of the UA last year, you were part of the steering board, the UA's leadership body, what would you do differently than last year's leadership? Lichtman: I think that one thing that we definitely have differently is that we have someone who is leading that has sat on steering for a year and will be a senior. I think they are two important things. I think we started with two strikes against us -- not to mention Duchess Harris leaving with a little potshot -- but I think that we started with disadvantges that were hard to come back from. I think that one thing that I will try to do is make sure that we are following our constitution as best as we can, incorporating our advisor as much as possible. Fran Walker has been to meetings that we had already and has been helpful in giving advice, and I think those are things that we didn't take advantage of. But inherently, we started with disadvantages that we don't have this year. DP: The various branches of student government were created to make things run more smoothly. But recent tensions and infighting seem to now put each group against each other. How will you help the various branches work together? Lichtman: Well, although Andy Sernovitz may not like the J[oint] C[o-sponsorship] B[oard], I think it is a step in the right direction. I saw a problem between S[tudent] A[ctivities] C[ouncil] and S[ocial] P[lanning and] E[vents] C[ommittee] and I brought the two sides together, and saw where problems lie. And I think this is the first positive thing that has come out as a result of discussions and negotiations between SPEC and SAC under the auspices of the UA. And I think that is one thing we can show and use it as an example. I think that essentially S[tudent] C[ommittee on] U[ndergraduate] E[ducation] and N[ominations and] E[lections] C[ommittee] are run fairly smoothly. The most problems are between SAC and SPEC. There is some bitterness as a result that SAC feeling they had money taken away from them, but I think the JCB whether you like the idea or not, the initial fact that we got different sides, that originally disagree, to come together and come to an agreement I think is one sign that myself as well as the UA are going to be able to unify undergraduate student government. DP: So, in that aspect and broadly, what is the role of UA and how much power do you have in general and over these other groups? Lichtman: That's a good question. First I think that we have power in the sense that, for example with SAC, we can audit their books or SPEC we can audit their books whenever we want, and that's something we don't really take advantage of. Although we do have a person that sits on their executive boards, we can have a more active role during the budgeting stage, we can take it upon ourselves to learn more about their groups and look at their books more closely and I think that there are things we can take advantage of in terms of monetary. But I think the power that we really have is in the influence that we can show. We can go to SAC, we can go to SPEC, and see what concerns they have in terms of what they need from the administration and if we can prove to them that we'll be actively lobbying for them and lobby for their concerns, I think we'll be very successful in our efforts to reincorporate oursleves in the power structure. DP: Are you in favor of recent proposals to hold back half of SAC's money and allocate it bi-annually? Lichtman: I think that that proposal was not thought out. It was hasty, [the UA member who suggested the proposal] wanted to try to create some excitement, he probably thought it was the only way we could get power. I don't think that's the way we need to go about trying to gain power. I think that our main . . . you can look at power in two ways -- money and influence. Right now we don't have money, let's now worry about that, let's concentrate on the influence and let's exhaust the options we have with that influence. If that turns out not to work, then maybe we'll have to redirect our efforts, but I haven't seen a proposal in terms of taking back some of that monetary power that I think could work or would be benficial to the student groups, plus that we've been trying to benefit the students here and I haven't really seen anything concrete that would actually do that. I think that a lot of people are just trying to create publicity. DP: One candidate for chair forcefully said that the UA should take direct action. How do you propose to react to certain situations such as the proposed banning of bikes on Locust Walk. What direction would you take? Lichtman: Although I think there needs to be some kind of -- not hasty action -- I'm not against creating some kind of uproar. It could be beneficial. The much more beneficial way is to sit down one-on-one and talk with people that we feel are against us and show them that we have the support and we have the people behind us who honestly feel this way I had a meeting with an administrator recently and he said that you know it's really good that we don't have to come in feeling defensive against each other and we can come in and talk and try to come to some kind of compromises. I think that's much more of an effective way to start. I think it's silly, or not silly, but I think it's dangerous to start out in such a defensive mode. I think that we can try to work with each other and then if it comes to the situation where that doesn't work, then we need to take advantage of other avenues. DP: What is your number one personal strength? And also, what is your number one personal weakness? Lichtman: I think my number one personal strength is the fact that I'm able to bring together students from all different areas. I've had the opportunity of sitting on organizations like SAC, SPEC, the Greek system, leadership training conferences, meetings with other types of leaders, for example Larry Moneta is organizing some student leader dinners where we sit around and just talk about issues. And I think that my ability to feel comfortable in a situation where ever I am to bring students together, to talk to them, I think that's my biggest strength. I think that's really important for the UA chair to feel as if he can be a unifying force. And I think my biggest weakness is, going back to the last question, I might be less apprehensive to quickly go outside the usual lines and structure. I think that I try to work within the structure and I might delay going outside of that structure. But I do have people on the UA who are willing to tell me when they feel we should go out of that structure. DP: Last year your predecessor said in a similar interview that it's not important to focus on these policy wide-sweeping issues, that we should get back to the basics. Where do you feel that the UA should be? Lichtman: I agree with him to the extent that large issues usually don't attract student attention. And if you don't attract student attention, you aren't going to be able to incorporate them into what you're trying to accomplish. Really what he was trying to say, I think, was that he really wants to deal with issues that are very tangible to students, and I agree with that. I think that there are issues such as need-blind admissions, recreational facilities, such as improving PennWatch and improving security. Those are all issues that are very tangible to students. None of those are things we need to take advantage of. Of course we're not going to give up on the larger goals or the larger issues, but those are things that students can't relate to. And, ultimately, we need to be a body that relates to students. DP: Specifically, how do you plan to bring the UA back to the students? Lichtman: Three ways. One, the outreach committee is going to be set up. All UA members will be attending meetings of these groups. It will include umbrella groups all the way down to small groups. We're going to try to start out by going to every group we could possibly go to. We have lists of different organizations and we're going to try to go to all of their meetings. I'm sure what's going to end up happening is that we're going to see where issues are coming out and where concerns are being raised and we're going to focus our energy there. Other ways we're going to go about doing it are we're going to be a holding leadership forum for student leaders this coming fall. Before this year's out we're going to be sending stduent leaders lists of fellow student leaders because a lot of people really don't know each other and don't feel like they can interact. And that's the UA's role: to help to get them to interact.