GUEST COLUMNISTS: The UA: Who we are, what we want to do

Frequently, members of the UA hear, "What does the UA do?" or sometimes, the question is replaced with an answer such as, "The UA doesn't do anything." As defined by our constitution, "The UA shall speak as the one representative voice of the undergraduates on affairs of concern to undergraduates," or, in our words, our purpose is to represent the undergraduate student body to the administration. Despite the fact that we were elected by the highest voter turnout in recent history, nearly double that of the previous year, we know that we cannot claim to represent the undergraduate population in its purest form. Some may say we are not well-rounded, but no group can claim to truly represent every person on campus. However, through many channels of communication, we think that we can represent the undergraduate students at Penn with our current members. We plan to have a comprehensive outreach program that will allow us to gather the undergraduate views. At the very end of last year, we compiled a survey of what students would like to see fill the remaining slots in Sansom Common. It was small, with just 173 usable surveys collected, but it showed us a good deal about what we should try to get into Sansom Common. An article about this was written in The Summer Pennsylvanian, which we urge you to look at online in The Daily Pennsylvanian archives if you would like to know the results. The conclusions of the survey were very much welcomed by Executive Vice President John Fry, as well as by his marketing consultants. We hope to do similar surveys with a larger population, perhaps something about what should accompany Sundance Cinemas and the proposed market in order to revitalize 40th Street. Surveys are just a small part of our outreach plans. We will use other avenues, such as guest columns in the DP and information on UTV's News Digest and Frontline. Additionally, we have updated our World Wide Web site for the first time in two years, and we plan to keep you informed of what we are doing there (http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~ua). We also have open meetings in the Class of 1920 Commons, right above Chats, every Sunday at 9 p.m., and we welcome anyone to come with any concerns they have. We had our retreat this past weekend, and we learned a lot about who we are, what we want to accomplish and how we want to do it. This spawned many goals we have for ourselves throughout the year. We do not want to give away what we plan to do just yet, nor do we want to commit ourselves to something that may be unattainable, but we will tell you this: We know College students have a hard time finding an open computer; we know that the tenure system clearly doesn't work right if someone like Political Science Professor Dan Deudney is forced out; we know all three high rises should have ATM machines for safety reasons; we know that the Katz Fitness Center, although a major improvement, doesn't fulfill the need for fitness facilities at Penn; we know that freshmen should not be living in the high rises; we know that the QuakerCard is a program that will be missed and that something needs to fill that void; and we know that most academic advisors don't know everything they need to. We will also tell you this: We're working on it. Our overriding goal is not to have every student at Penn say, "Wow, the UA is such a great organization," but rather to get as much done as possible to better this campus socially and academically. We tolerate, perhaps even welcome, the lack of recognition when it comes to the UA, because we know that you are here to have the best college experience possible, and you don't care who gives it you. All we hope is that you have faith in the students who got tons of signatures, missed class time to campaign and were eventually elected by all of you, to do the best we can to improve life at Penn.

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