Candidates aim to make UA more visible, relevant

Opening statements:

Matt Lattman: I want you to imagine about 25 kids, all with amazing talents and their own ideas, and all with real leadership abilities. And I want you to imagine them being left on an island with nothing but each other. And you think they're going to kill each other, right? You know it's very easy for each person to try and lead and to let everybody's egos flare up as they try to do things their way.

Now, imagine if they change how they're going to do everything and they elect a leader. They elect someone to harness this talking and to help with decision making based on a sense of what's best for the community -- and survival is a lot more likely in this situation.

In an [oversimplified] way, this is not so much like the UA. I really have four goals that I'd like to accomplish this year. First, to stress research. I feel that when we go into meetings nowadays, we often go in not nearly prepared enough, and we learn things over the course of the meeting that we should have learned before we entered the room. That to me is unacceptable. If you're going to be able to achieve with administrators, you need to get past the institutional memory, and by institutional memory, I mean just knowing what you've seen as you've been at the school. You need to go beyond that, and you need to know the whole history of the issue before you begin debating it.

Jason Levy: This is actually my fourth year on the body. I was elected as a freshman, and I served. I have a fair amount of leadership experience in the last three years. I served as a sophomore as student life committee chairman; this past year as a co-chairman of the freshman committee, where I worked pretty closely with eight freshman, trying to integrate them into UA culture. And I also served as UC steering rep for the UA, where I worked pretty closely with top administrators like Judy Rodin and Provost Barchi to technically set the agenda for UC steering. But I spent a lot of time working to repair the body, and I'm really proud of the job that we did.

The reason why I'm running for UA chair is because I think that we are on the crux of... we are about to enter new heights. We're almost there, and I'd like to lead our body to new greatness. This past year, we've done a great job in terms of substance, but we definitely lack in terms of publicizing what we did or allowing access to what we do to our constituents and to the DP and also to other various student groups. I'd like to lead the UA from a paradigm of stasis to one of action.

I think that our guiding principle this past year has been standing still saying, "Constituents, come to us. Come to our meetings. They're open to everybody." Instead of staying stable, telling student groups to come to us. Telling the DP, having the DP reporter to come to us. I think it's really a two-way street, and I think that we need to reach out to our constituents to specific student groups and also to you guys, because I think that a free flow of information is definitely one of the best ways to have students understand our student government.

Kirsten Grubbs: The reason that I'm running for chair is, like Jason, this will be my fourth year on the UA. And I've watched a lot of changes take place -- some good, some bad. But I think that the most important thing right now that the UA lacks is networking and, for lack of a better word, better marketing on campus. The fact that we come up with these great ideas and we write proposals and we debate these things for hours on end and then nobody ever hears about them and they just die and they don't get taken to fruition 90 percent of the time, and I think that has to do with the fact that the relationships are lacking with the rest of the campus. I mean, we're a tight body internally, but I feel like my strongest point is that I have relationships with the chairs of all the other branches of student government and the people that it's important. I have strong relationships with the administrators. Things that the external voice of the UA needs to be really strong in.

DP: What do you hope to accomplish this year as chair?

Jason Levy: In a broad sense, my two overall goals for chair would be approving things internally within our body and also externally going to other organizations. I guess I'll start with internal aspects. I was just looking back at the previous interview for chairs last year, and I saw a large amount of focus being put on the fact that our body was very divisive, that there was lot of places in our body where people hated each other. One of my major goals for this year that I'm very proud of was working to foster a sense of community and a friendly working environment within our body. I did so by taking on additional responsibilities and creating a lot of social programming within our body. I don't think that we can accomplish anything unless we're able to look at each other as friends.

That said, though, I think that the major thing that we lack within our body is that we forget a lot of times the unspoken members. These are the people that come newly onto the body who aren't necessarily excited about speaking at meetings. I would specifically target these people to ensure that they can reach their potential. During meetings, a small thing would just be to call people out and ask them what they think. But on a much broader sense, it would be to give everyone the tools to accomplish their goals on the UA. I really believe that any UA member should have the ability to speak to an administrator to accomplish their goals unabated. Certainly, I also would like to outreach to other organizations. I see us going to other groups' meetings as an important way of getting our word out.

Kirsten Grubbs: I think one of the main things that is really important to me to change that hasn't changed in the three years that I've been here so far is the amount of bureaucracy, the amount of political correctness that goes on. The fact that people will come to a meeting, and it's basically rubber-stamping an issue that everybody thinks, "I better not speak out against this because people might look at me the wrong way. They might call me a racist. They might call me a conservative." So I really want to break through that by getting people to bring up the other side of an issue, have intelligent debate rather than just pushing something through because you think that that's what someone else wants to hear.

Externally, I feel the same thing with the politicking. I feel that steering meetings are... people come and everybody goes around and says what they're doing, and people look at going to meetings as a chore. And as much as this might not sound politically correct, I can see a lot more of a balanced relationship coming if we had steering meetings at Happy Hour or if people were comfortable enough with each other that they could say, "This is how I feel about something," rather than it becoming something where everybody agrees and nobody agrees to disagree.

Matt Lattman: I already talked about my first goal being the idea of being better researched as a body, so after that, I have three goals that I'd like to discuss. The first one is retention. We've had a big problem with retention this year. We've lost members. And I don't necessarily think that losing members is a bad thing, but you want to lose them at the beginning of the year. If there's people that aren't interested in the UA and it's not the right place for them, then you want to get people on right away that will have a full year to be part of it. I myself came on as a replacement member at the end of my freshman year and stayed on the body for the remainder of that year, serving as a committee chair. So I want to create this professional family, which would allow for some camaraderie but also stress work and success and holding each other accountable, holding ourselves accountable to each other and to the rest of the community. Through that, I think that there can be excitement that will be generated out of that. In addition, I think that every member needs a rigorous training in Robert's Rules of Order, because I think a lot of the times we become upset with ourselves at meetings, we become upset with other people because nobody's following the rules which should govern a meeting and allow people to talk freely and openly.

My second goal is to allow students to buy back into student government. One of the ways is, we used to have a program called the "coop group" program. I would like to change the "coop group" program and allow for groups to send us... to advertise to groups to tell us that they want a "coop group" representative so that we can work with them to set up how we can best help them rather than just assign somebody to them and call. I want to bring back town hall forums increase our relationship with the DP because I think that we've had a very negative relationship with everybody else outside the body. So I want to improve the overall external image.

DP: Please evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this year's body.

Kirsten Grubbs: Actually, I think that one of the main weaknesses was that the body in being an older body -- it was mostly juniors and seniors -- I felt like there were a lot of people who felt that they had been here long enough to know that they maybe didn't think they could make a difference, or that they weren't going to be around to see the changes, therefore it didn't matter to them. Which is different from this year, where most of the majority will be younger members who have some of the spontaneity and the optimism that is vital to maintaining this organization. But the great strengths were, as Jason mentioned, the fact that we were friends. We could schedule social events together and people would actually show up and be there. And I feel that when you have conflicts, things just don't get done, and that's why I feel that relationships are important, and we really had great relationships on the body. Now, I just think that we need to take that and expand it so that the UA has great relationships with SPEC or with Dr. Rodin... because when you fight, nothing gets accomplished but hearing yourself speak.

Matt Lattman: I think some of our weaknesses were being relevant to the student body, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that. I think there's no group on campus that is handling our educational issues. SCUE has pretty much not produced anything in the last two years. We really haven't seen them fighting for most of the student body, and it's also very College-focused and really doesn't represent Engineering students, Wharton students or Nursing students. So I think that it was a huge mistake a few years ago when the UA disbanded its educational committee, and I'd like to see it come back because I think that it's something that's really important. We're paying $40,000 to attend this university.

In addition, there really was a lack of accountability. We had a work group list that came out every week and said who was doing what, and as a fault of all the members of the body, we never really questioned each other when projects weren't finished and what the progress of these projects were. And I think it's a fault of the committee chairs, of which I was one, of the executive board, which Jason and Kirsten were part of, for not being hard on our members. But I think that that's something we really need to improve on.

But I do think that we made some huge successes in a program that Jason started with Ethan and that the committee chairs really took hold of, which was to involve non-UA members as voting committee members. By doing so, we were able to produce some work from people who weren't part of the UA and became involved, and a couple of them actually ran for UA and won this year. And they kind of understand the process and were able to really make some beneficial improvements to this university without being part of the body.

Jason Levy: In the four years I've served on UA, I've definitely gained perspective in terms of the different policies that have worked and the ones that have failed. Two years ago, when I served as a committee chair, I thought there was a large focus on style and publicity rather than the substance of what we do, and I think as a reaction to that, our exec board this year really wanted to focus in on substance as opposed to publicity. And I think the end result in the eyes of the student body was the same. I mean, we're not relevant to their needs. This year, I believe that it would be to our benefit to work to strike a balance between these two ends. And I guess the way I would perceive doing that would be to take on large issues. I think as it stands now there's a big paradigm where if an administrator says no to an issue, it's the end of that issue. We can't do it. And for the most part, the administrators have similar goals as we do. We both want to better the lives of students on campus. So we usually take them at face value and leave it alone.

But I do think that there are certain times when we should fight the administration. Not necessarily just within the UA, but within garnering support within the entire student body. See, for example, work to get an undergraduate on a Trustee committee as a prime example. I think that it's a benefit to every undergraduate on campus, and I think we should work together with other student groups, with the DP, as a means to garner support to get the administration to change their minds on issues such as that.

DP: What is the purpose of the UA chair with regard to the body and the student body at large?

Matt Lattman: The UA chair, in my opinion, has really two goals. The first is to administer the body and to make sure that people have the common goal of production and the common goal of trying to make the school a better place. And I think that it's a mentality that needs to come down from the chair to the executive board to the committee chairs and filter down into the rest of the body. But the chair also has to be open to all members and actually seek out younger members and try to improve them and nourish their talent.

That said, the greater charge of the UA chair is to push the UA, to be the voice of the UA to the rest of the administration, to work with Dr. Rodin, to work with the provost and to not say yes every time that they tell us something. As Jason was saying earlier, I've sat in a provost meeting where the provost had said no, and that's the end of the conversation. That's simply unacceptable. But in order to do that, the chair needs to be as researched as anybody else in there and needs to be able to tell the provost when the provost is wrong and have something to back him or her up. Because otherwise the provost is going to see right through it. So the goal of the UA chair is to harness the research that everybody has put in on the UA and then bring that to the administration and show the administration when there's something that's really wrong that we need to fix.

Jason Levy: Externally, I see the UA chair as the chief advocate for any issue that the UA passes. I've had experience serving as a member of the University Council steering board, and then I've gotten to work with the provost and President Rodin to get them to agree to changes that were suggested by the UA and the NEC to the structure of University Council. I would definitely take this experience of working with top administrators to enact the change that is definitely to the benefit of undergraduates, and as chair I would continue to seek to do so in any capacity regardless of the issue.

Internally, though, I see the UA chair's job quite differently. I think the UA chair must divorce himself from personal agendas and specific issues and really serve as a facilitator for any UA member's projects. I think that the UA chair should always be accessible, should always have a top goal in their mind that they want every UA member to achieve their potential. We do not want UA members to feel that they are not getting anything out of the body and to feel that they should resign. I definitely see that as a problem, and I would work very strongly to ensure that every UA member feels welcome and that they have the ability to achieve anything that they desire.

Kirsten Grubbs: I see the purpose of the chair as the external voice and the external face of the UA. There are very clear charges set out by our constitution about what the roles should be, and I think that it's been lost in past execs that everybody kind of leans on each other and says, "OK, you take care of this, I'll take care of that," so that the chair in the past has lost this purpose of putting themselves out there and being a part of the campus and representing the UA in a way that puts in more of a relevant light with individuals on campus. In the past, it has been that the UA chair is a mentor to the people internally. And whereas experience always lends itself to mentoring, at the same time, that is the role of the vice chair. It's to make sure that, internally, everyone is cohesive and everyone is happy with their role on the UA.

I think objectivity and neutrality are the most important traits and the most important purpose of the chair because you can't have a personal agenda. You have to be able to moderate. And being secretary this year, I saw how difficult it is. I had to transcribe what was being said by both sides of an argument, and it takes a certain type of person to be able to do that, and that's where I think that my strengths lie, in my objectivity.

DP: What separates you from the other two candidates running for this position?

Jason Levy: I would point to my experience on the UA for the past four years and my leadership definitely would distinguish me between the other two candidates. First serving as a co-chair for the freshman committee this past year, I was able to, one, work very closely with a group of new members that faced a very steep learning curve in the sense that it takes a fair amount of time for UA members to become acclimated to our body meetings. I definitely took that experience to heart, and I would like to focus on such new members. I would like to institute a mentoring system, where new members can be paired with more experienced ones, because I feel that an experienced member who has done a lot on the body has the opportunity to -- had somebody take them aside and really show them the ropes. Externally, I'm equally qualified because of my experience as UC Steering Rep. As I stated before, I took essentially a lame duck position where the UC steering rep was just someone who lost the race for carry and did very little just maybe setting the agenda for UC meetings. UC was a horribly ineffective and crappy body by all accounts and I worked tirelessly this year to ensure that undergraduates were able to serve on UC committees, which were the lifeblood of the University Council, and also to ensure that University Council meetings dealt with issues that were relevant to undergraduates.

Kirsten Grubbs: As I stated before, being secretary this year really gave me a lot of practice and a lot of experience in being able to moderate and take all personal feeling out of things that are going on. Because you really can't -- you can have the most vehement position on something, and you can't sway other people's opinions.... But what is your role, is to be completely objective and impartial. And that's something that I already have a lot of experience in. But in terms of my other experiences, I have also had the very unique experience of being on another branch of student government as well. I've been director of the SPEC Film Society for the last two years. So I have already made close relationships with the future chairs of the branches for next year so I would be hitting the ground running with these other groups. And I think that's really important, because the sooner you start, the sooner things get done, and the sooner we become relevant to everyone out there.

Matt Lattman: I think that three things really separate me from my co-candidates. First of all, I have very strong parliamentary skills and parliamentary procedure. I've debated in the past, I've chaired committees, and I think that that's important.... Second of all, I do have this research mentality and research focus. I think that it's important to have not only statistics but knowledge of the past, what's happened in the past, and also to be willing to go out and throw a survey -- a legitimately constructed survey -- in an approach that a statistician would use in order to garner the data that you need from the student body that could actually be used and is entirely independent of your own biases. Furthermore, I have shown that I'm able to restrain my own biases. We've worked on topics in my committee, for instance, that aren't things I would necessarily deal with or necessarily agree with, but I've worked to support the members in doing that, and I feel that every member has the right to do their own projects, no matter whether or not I personally agree with it. Lastly, I feel that I've developed -- while I haven't had the same exposure to every administrator that Jason has, for instance -- the administrators that I have had exposure to, which are very numerous, I've developed very strong relationships with and very professional relationships with. As we've developed those relationships, they've responded very differently to me, and what they've done for me has improved, so I think we can bring that to the rest of the UA and the rest of the administrators we work with.

DP: What do you think are going to be the biggest challenges facing the UA in the coming year?

Kirsten Grubbs: The biggest challenge we'll face this year is the biggest challenge we face every year, and it's relevance to the individual. You know, SPEC puts on Spring Fling and everybody knows it and everybody loves it. But the UA does something, and either no one cares or no one hears about it.... So I think to overcome that obstacle, I know I used this word before but marketing is such a big hurdle that we have so far failed to overcome. And that is my prime focus and the most important thing that the chair next year needs to deal with. Because until the students care what we do, it just won't have the same effect. It won't change things for the better unless people perceive them as having changed for the better.

Matt Lattman: We're in an interesting position right now. We have 17 of 25 people on the UA right now as being incumbents, and that creates a lot of potential for apathy. It just happens that when people get reelected and they get older, they tend to feel like they can always get reelected and they don't have to worry about doing anything anymore in order to prove themselves. And I want to nip that in the bud right away and let it be known that apathy is unacceptable because you're held accountable not only to your peers on the body, but to the rest of the University at large. And I want to make sure that there are weekly conversations between the UA chair and the DP reporter in which, you know, we don't always let only the pleasant press be known. But you know, if we're not doing a good job, the student body has a right to know and the UA chair should be honest with the DP and with the rest of the University for not doing a good job on something. The reason why I think this is because the student body doesn't elect us for who we are, they elect us to represent them. If we're not representing them, then we have to do a better job. So I'm not saying that this is necessarily has been a problem in the past, although with many members -- some members -- it has been, but I want to make that so no member is not representing their constituency. So I think that apathy is my big issue that I think we need to work on, relevant again... I think we need to take a look at our committee which we overhauled this year and see if that was the right overhaul and see if we can make improvements on that and better serve our student body and the needs of them in issues like education, which I was talking about earlier.

Jason Levy: I think that the UA has 33 very generally talented people and as an organization we are the voice of undergraduates on Penn's campus. But we are clearly not the only voice on campus. There's plenty of talented student leaders in a variety of organizations that as a general rule have been largely out-of-the-loop in terms of UA, UA projects and UA decisions. And my goals for next year would be to bring them into the fold to truly make our student government something that encompasses a lot of different voices, not necessarily the ones that are on the UA, but also the voices of people that are outside of our group. This past year, I worked closely with the NEC, as an example of what we can accomplish. Previously, the NEC and the UA had a horrible relationship. The chair of the NEC came into her new term believing that it was the goal of the UA to destroy her organization. Which not necessarily was true, it was close to it. I worked closely with them in order to pass these changes to the University Council. And as a result, by working together, we were able to accomplish so much more than we could have normally. I would like to apply that model to not only the NEC but also to SCUE next year, so that we can tackle educational issues together, as well normal student groups. The minority coalitions that come to us for UC steering should not just be coming to us, we should be coming to them and seeing what they can accomplish.

DP: What kind of a relationship do you think the UA should have with the University administration?

Matt Lattman: Professional, yet resistive, I think is the best way to put it. I think that we need to treat our administrators with a lot of respect because they are individuals who have accomplished a lot. But at the same time they are still humans and the calls that they make and the decisions that they make are based on their own personal biases towards how they feel the University should be best-run. So, in order to have an effective relationship with the administrators we need to treat them with that respect but at the same time show them when we think that they are wrong and be ever-willing to look over their work and question it. The UA should be reading The Almanac every week, for instance I know that I'm one of the few people that does, because we don't know what's going on at the University as a whole and if the UA members can't do that... That's something that I think is very important that UA members know what's going on at the University, not from the DP, but also from the University's own sources of publication because sometimes things get lost in the fine print--the stuff that The Almanac comes out with. An example of that real fast is that we were at the UC meeting looking over the changes to certain UC committees, and I noticed in the fine print of The Almanac that the undergraduates as a whole were cut one seat in the International Programs committee, which handles Study Abroad as one of its main charges. I made sure to question that to the administration and sure enough, within five minutes, we were told they would probably give us the seat back. In the next steering meeting they gave us that seat back. So you have to question their judgement.

Jason Levy: I'd say as a general rule that the goals of administrators and students are quite similar in that we both want what is best for the undergraduates and for the University as a whole. However, there are definitely times when our interpretations of what is best will definitely differ. And in those times, I think it is definitely appropriate for the UA to stand up for the student's interest. As I said before, I see taking on issues that truly benefit the entire undergraduates as something that we should make our top priority first. I can definitely think of examples--such as, the University administration's resistance to having an undergraduate on the Board of Trustees, as an example of this disconnect between administrators and students. In these cases, I think it's highly appropriate for us to reach out to the entire campus and to look at our common goals, our common desires to benefit students. We should rise up together and in cases such as that, when there is grassroots support across the University, I don't think the University can say no. I don't think the administration can say no. But they can say no, when we just sit there as sheep and say, "OK, you're right," consistently, over and over again. I do not believe the UA's accomplishment should be us rubber stamping administrator's goals, but rather they should be examples of the UA and the administration working together and also us fighting for what's best in certain cases.

Kirsten Grubbs: OK, I think on this point, I actually differ quite significantly from Jason and Matt because in my experience as chair of the Facilities Committee two years ago, I've seen both approaches taken. I've seen a member walk in and butt heads with a provost and he's been working on the same issue for the past three years. There's been no progress made because there's conflict and there is no seeing eye-to-eye. But then, as the chair of the Dining Advisory board this year, I would sit down over coffee with the head manager of Aramark and just suggest ideas with him. A friendly, you know, in just a camaraderie sort of way and these changes took place without us ever even having to bring up a formal proposal or come and yell at them and say "This is what we want, you're doing an awful job." So, these relationships are a lot more beneficial when they smile when you walk in their door. I think that this year we definitely lost face with some of the administrators because we never met with them, we never e-mailed them to see how things were going. The difference is, when you only go to an administrator when you want something changed, or when you don't like what they're doing, they're not going to want to listen to you when you do have something to say. I think that this year, we need to schedule monthly meetings, just to catch up, just to make sure that everyone is on the same page. I think things will be accomplished in a much stronger way, than if we were just constantly yelling at each other.

DP: Some former UA chairmen have suggested that the body is best utilized focusing on smaller, tangible issues. This year, the body seemed to spend a significant amount of time focusing on broader, national issues. What kind of balance should there be between these types of issues?

Jason Levy: I think the best way to strike a balance is truly to tackle both issues. I only do believe that we should tackle national issues when there's a significant relevance to the student body. This past year, I wrote a proposal attacking SEVIS and the Patriot Act not because they were large national issues that were being discussed in Congress but because they were directly affecting international students on this campus. The administration is part of a lobbying organization that tries to effect change within Congress. They're a part of a lobbying organization with the other members of the Ivy League. As such, I think it's highly appropriate for the UA and for students to have a say in what issues they lobby. However, I would not like these issues to dominate the UA agenda, but rather to only be discussed when it will have a direct relevance to the undergraduates.

And further, I would not want to discuss these issues when I think the outcome of the vote will be predetermined. I think that UA members are not elected based on their political ideologies, and as such, I don't think it would be appropriate to bring up issues such as abortion, for instance, where no one's mind would be changed through debate and discussion. Rather, I truly would like to see people come into our meetings with an open mind, and I would not allow an issue to come up that people already have preconceived notions about.

That said, I do believe that baby projects are the fuel of our organization. These small projects are really what make tangible change on our campus available, and I would work highly to encourage individual members to work on these small projects, both inside these Sunday meetings and definitely outside of them.

Kirsten Grubbs: I think that this issue is very closely related to the issue of relevance. I think that when a student opens up the DP and sees that the UA is getting Chick-fil-A to come to campus, or that we have helped the University decide what's going to go in a location and it happens to be Ben and Jerry's, I think that that is more important and is more relevant to the students than opening up the paper and seeing that 17 of 33 individual people on a body disagree with the Patriot Act or agree with the Patriot Act. I don't think students on this campus are very concerned with our personal views on things, especially when you have someone... for instance, David Copley pointed out that there's the 78 percent silent minority who actually disagree with affirmative action, and we had one person bring this issue up while everyone else rubber stamped the affirmative action because there were people sitting in the room that they didn't want to offend. And I really feel like things need to open up if we're gonna have any type of discussions about that. I think that if we are going to have a discussion about the Higher Education Act, for instance, because that does affect us, then there needs to be a minority report written or the voices of the minority won't be heard, and therefore, 33 people decide what 10,000 undergraduates feel about something, and this gets lobbied when maybe people don't feel that way. So I think it's more important to open the DP and see that we're gonna bring a new Steve and Barry's to campus so people can buy cheap T-shirts. I think that that's what we're here for.

Matt Lattman: I just want to bring to light that when Kirsten discusses one member bringing the other side of the affirmative action issue, I came in with both sides of the issue on paper, and when it became clear that nobody was going to read from the other side, I decided to present the other side, not necessarily being in full agreement with the author that I was presenting, but to get it out there. I say this because I feel that it's important that we're not afraid to offend people, we're not afraid to come with research. And I think that's been a problem in the past. Nobody comes with anything printed out. Well you know what? I don't think that the issue should be debated if nobody has anything to say on it, and if it's going to be five people back and forth making up the minds of the other 27 people, with the chair not voting, that that issue should not be debated and that meeting should be tabled. Again, there should only be issues that are relevant to the student body -- things that involve education, things that involve people of our age group... and just getting people out to vote should be something that the UA should help with, and we did support Get Out The Vote this year. We co-sponsored the event, we got ourselves involved with it.

I do think that we are lacking on local issues. For instance, I tried to write a UA statement on Michael Nutter's bill in his district, which created sanctions for the University based on noise complaints in his district. And I was told by the chair that he did not feel it was appropriate at that time for the body to say something, and I disagree with that and I think that those are the types of issues that we should be bringing up on a national level. But again, small, tangible projects are the things that people can accomplish individually, and we need to concentrate on those also.

DP: Five members quit the body this past year. What will you do as chairman to ensure that the representatives stay on board and put forth their best effort?

Kirsten Grubbs: I think that it's almost an issue that has to be taken up before elections happen and that I can address before elections next year. I think it's something where people need to understand the commitment and the involvement that the UA brings forth. I mean, our meetings are never less than two hours long. If you walk out of there by 11:00, it's an amazing feat, and people don't understand that when they run for the UA. And then they get there and they realize that there is this commitment that they didn't want to make, and so they back out.

But for next year, to make sure that that doesn't happen again, I think people need to be working on issues that they care about. While I do want to re-implement the solid committee structure so that we don't lose people on the fringes, so that no one becomes marginalized, at the same time, there needs to be some form of recognition. I think that if you were instrumental in bringing Ben and Jerry's, then you should be the person that talks to the DP and get your name quoted so people recognize that you are working hard. And I think that when people are recognized for the fact that they've made a difference, then that makes them want to make a difference again. If I'm chair, I'm not going to automatically... when the DP reporter calls me, I'm going to say, "You know what, I didn't work on this issue. You want to talk to this person because this person knows the most about it and this is the person who should get recognized for it."

Matt Lattman: I think there needs to be an ability to buy into the UA. One of the biggest failures of the UA this year was to create a committee system without consulting the voting body, and it was done by the executive board without getting the body's input. And I think that it's hard for people then to buy into the structure that was created. We asked for it to be approved by the body, and only then was it voted on and there was still considerable dissent. So I think that in reevaluating the committee structure this year, we need to have people buy into it and say, "Hey, this is a system that's going to work and this is a system that we can get excited about."

That said, there will be people that may not be excited about it at all, and I really hope with 17 incumbents, that's not a problem this year. So you want to force those people off right away through showing them that they will be accountable and get people on the body that want to be accountable. If we lose five people in September, it's better than losing two in November, two in December and only having people on for a month or two that can't really accomplish anything.

That said, I also think it's important for the chair to allow younger members to prosper and really encourage working down through the system and allowing the committee chairs to take credit, allowing the individual members to take ownership of projects and then take credit for them after they're completed. Because I think that without ownership of our organization, there's no way that people can be excited about it.

Jason Levy: I think as it stands now, a small percentage of people on the UA do a large percentage of the work -- almost an in-crowd of people, like exec, the committee chairs and their close friends. And I definitely would like to combat this perception of an in- versus an out-crowd and really try to give every member the tools and opportunities for achieving their full potential. I've already previously mentioned my proposals to create a mentoring program between old and new UA members, as well as working further to continue the social bonding events that I made a priority this past year, as well as giving educational opportunities to all new UA members. Because I really believe that every single person that ran for the UA, at least at one point, really felt passionate about it. That's the reason why they ran, and I want to harness that passion and keep it going.

But I'd like to talk briefly about the committee structure this year. I believe that the main failure of it was a disconnect between exec and committee chairs that transferred over into a disconnect between exec and the regular body. My sophomore year, when I served as student life committee chair, I was on UA exec, which was great in the sense that exec knew exactly what each member was doing. However, the problem was there were nine people in the room, and that was really inefficient. This current year, we worked with five people on exec, not with the committee chairs, and that caused a disconnect but efficient meetings. Therefore, I propose having the vice chair have regular meetings once every week with committee chairs so that there is a connection between committee chairs and exec and the general body and the exec board.

DP: How do you respond to people who say that the UA is a largely ineffective and unknown body on campus?

Matt Lattman: I think, to some extent, it hasn't always been that far from the truth. I think there's a lot of things that we've accomplished and a lot of things that have gone unnoticed, but in the end, we don't represent everybody and we need to do a better job of that. I think that the reason why I feel the need to hold ourselves to such a high standard is because if you're complacent with where you are, you're never going to improve, so I think I may take a more harsh view of the UA than Jason or Kirsten, but it's only because I think unless you look at it harshly, there's nowhere to strive from.

I think that we have to allow for groups to work mutually with the UA. We need to have administrators work with the UA. I think if we do that, then we can unclog... it's kind of like an hourglass, and the administration's up here, and the student body's down here, and we're that little hole. And if we create better relationships with both the groups that aren't our friends and aren't people that we all individually agree with, and then also connect with administrators -- not just Dr. Rodin, Provost Barchi and Omar Blaik, but the people that actually do the work, like, for instance, Lisa Prasad, who's in charge of all the real estate for the University, who I've developed a relationship with this year -- if we work with those people and we work with all of our groups, we can open up that little clog, and the connection between the two groups would happen a lot faster.

Jason Levy: To combat the perception of ineffectiveness within the student body, I believe that the UA really needs to focus on little things. I believe that probably it's pretty accurate to say that the majority or at least a sizable portion of the campus truly does not care about student government issues, and that's fine. But for the people that do care, I think we really need to be accessible. For things as small as keeping updated minutes available to everybody, and that's not necessarily something that we focused on this year in exec board, and it's not necessarily the fault of any individual. But I truly believe that small things like Web sites, like minutes, like having open meetings where we go to a different location for each meeting and publicizing it -- for instance, having a meeting in the High Rise North lounge or the rooftop lounge and publicizing that meeting to people within that residence would go a large way to making us more open and accessible to the student body.

And further, I do believe that there needs to be more of a two-way relationship between us and the DP, since the DP has a huge role in formulating the opinions of students on our campus. And I believe that it's a shame that the only perception the DP has of us is from the reporter that comes to our Sunday meetings. And I would focus on having updated press releases or dialogue after every exec meeting such that we can tell you guys what's going on outside of just the Sunday meetings.

Kirsten Grubbs: I think that in order to address this, it has to be something that changes that I started to change this year and that I want to see changed a lot next year. We as the UA take advantage of the fact that we have knowledge of things on campus that most people don't have knowledge of. We take it for granted and we don't use it and we don't disseminate it to the general student body. An example of this is, this year, I was working on trying to get more retail locations to accept PennCash. And most people perceive PennCash as, you know, you stick a $5 bill into the machine in the library and you get copies. That's the only way that people know how to use PennCash. And I suggested to them, "You know, why don't you have a place where you can transfer bursar credit onto your PennCash?" And they said, "Oh, you've been able to do that for five years." And I said, "Well, no one knows that."

So my focus changed from this huge project of trying to get these new retail locations to actually starting a grassroots campaign to market this fact. Let people know that they can use bursar credit for PennCash. And I actually got criticized on the body this year. They said, "But Kirsten, that's something that the administration is screwing up on, and that's not our job to do their marketing." But I really feel that it is. I feel that if we have knowledge of something, we should share it with everyone, whether it's old or new. And by giving everybody all of the information that we have and not just the things that we think are newsworthy, I really think that we could become more of a day-to-day... you know, people rely on us to find out things that they maybe didn't know about campus.

DP: What do you think stands in the way of students effecting change on this campus? Student apathy, structural problems or other factors? Jason Levy: As I said before, I do believe that we're the voice of the undergraduates. We're not the only voice. And I've worked this past year to give other groups that same access to administrators that we have through my work on the UC. I believe that the UC is a prime example of places where students can go to bring their issues to some of the most important administrators on campus, and for that reason, I worked very hard to ensure that there was an open forum session at the end of every upcoming UC meeting such that any student group that has a relevant issue will have access to these very administrators.

I would like to extend that paradigm not just to the UC, but also to other aspects of university life. I would like to outreach to student groups and ask them, "What issues are you working on that you might need help with lobbying administrators to accomplish?" And it would be the job of the UA to decide whether these issues are something that are benefits to students in general or at very least would not be of harm to the majority of students. And if it's the case that the body decides to go forward with it, I think that we should use our resources to lobby for other student groups' projects. I do not believe that the UA should solely be based on the agendas of each individual member, albeit they might be very noble ones. I do not think that each individual member... their biases should shape the dialogue between us and the administration.

Kirsten Grubbs: I think that the main thing that stands in the way of effecting change is the lack of communication, the disconnect between the middlemen. I feel like we're middlemen between the University administration and the person who, although they're a senior, has never even met Dr. Rodin. We are the people that have to bridge that gap, and I feel that people let that stand in the way of effecting change. But I feel that we can change that. I feel that instead of once a year having a student government meet-and-greet, where everybody comes together and we eat doughnut holes together, that's our bonding time. I think that if people would call each other up and say, "Hey, let's go discuss having a UA-SPEC co-sponsored event, and let's go talk about it. Let's go have dinner. Let's go to Happy Hour." I think it needs to become something where we can all talk to each other. You can have a late-night conversation with a friend while you're drunk, and it can be more deep and more meaningful than a conversation that you have with someone who you're supposed to be creating this huge change that's supposed to affect everyone. So I think that if we can find that middle ground where we can have late night conversations with people that we work with and people that we have professional relationships with, I really think that the entire organization -- the six branches and then the IFC and Panhel -- can create this huge juggernaut, this powerhouse that can do a lot more than each group individually could ever hope to accomplish.

Matt Lattman: I'm going to talk about an experience that I had this year on the UA and through that try to paint a picture of a problem that I didn't realize was going to come up and how I think I've learned from that and how I think I can improve upon the UA through that experience. Some of you may know the whole Palladium situation. With the Palladium this year, I had talked to a lot of people who wanted the Palladium to stay on campus, felt that it was an important part of the University. And I presented a resolution to the UA and it passed, saying that we wanted the Palladium to stay. Now the Palladium space, the Gold Standard space is highly coveted because it's in the ARCH Building and there's groups that need to expand, minority resource centers that are in dire need of additional space already in that building that already had their eyes on that space. In the upcoming month, I met with the minority coalitions with another UA member, and we developed a plan with them for additional space, and we went down to Omar Blaik with it and came up with several suitable potential replacement spaces for the minority resource centers. We worked with their staffs to see what their staffs wanted, and we're still working with Omar Blaik to see where we can relocate them for additional space.

The reason why I bring this up is because the UA worked in a partnership with other groups, and I feel that with just the UA's name behind it, it only goes so far. With just that coalition's name on it, just an administrator's name on it, it only goes so far. Until we develop these partnerships with other groups that have a vested interest in the University, we're not going to be able to reach the level of achievement that we should.

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