As we enter the 2011 election season, we feel it necessary to take a look back at the Undergraduate Assembly’s successes and shortcomings of the last year.
To start, we believe the UA has been successful across three themes — securing space, connecting students and streamlining student life.
First, The Late Night, a new student space in the basement of 1920 Commons, has ameliorated the study-space crunch on campus. Open all day through 2 a.m., late night studiers no longer have to trek to the Rosengarten Reserve Room. But we’re not stopping there. We are continuing to work to identify new spaces as the campus expands.
Second, as an example of connecting students, Penn Book Bazaar has linked students across schools and classes by offering them the opportunity to decrease hefty textbook bills through the exchange of used books.
Third, PennApps Labs and various UA initiatives like online grade notification have redefined student life as we know it. We are sure that PennApps Labs will build upon the success of Penn StudySpaces and continue to enhance our collective undergraduate experience through improving technology for all.
However, we can all admit that the UA has shortcomings. These are areas in which we are confident that our successors, no matter who they are, will work to make improvements. On a holistic level, the UA needs to improve communication with the undergraduate population. Although all-school emails are effective, we believe that we can enhance marketing efforts related to our projects, enabling students to immediately latch on to new ideas that will improve their daily lives.
Additionally, we’re all aware that some changes are in the wind for Penn, and the UA can ensure that it is poised to address upcoming large scale issues — specifically, how the University will incorporate the addition of Penn Park, how students will access the new space via Penn Transit and how students will experience programming in the Park. Here, we think that the UA can do a better job of communicating with students and involving the undergraduate population in these changes.
Lastly, although the UA has made important strides in ongoing initiatives, there is still much work to be done. The UA Academic Affairs committee and the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, for example, were successful in ensuring that hundreds more syllabi were posted online, but we still have not reached 100 percent. This type of change takes a long time, and we know our successors will do an excellent job in keeping these projects moving forward long after our departure.
We were honored and privileged to serve as your first UA president and vice president, and we look forward to hearing about the tremendous accomplishments of our new leaders.
Matt Amalfitano and Mark Pan are the president and vice president of the Undergraduate Assembly, respectively. They can be contacted at president@pennua.org.
