SGA presidential nominees speak out

Existing Student Government Association officers and their competing candidates are crossing their fingers in hopes of winning their elections Tuesday. This is Zmarak Khan’s, the Student Government Association president, last term as president, and two candidates, Sheena Davis and Eddie O’Leary, the current SGA vice president, are vying to succeed him.

“I try to stress how important student involvement is, just as in any other elections. We have a lot of say as far as where their money goes and how they are represented to the outside world,” O’Leary said. “It’s really important for students to have a say because there is a lot of opportunity in the SGA to make change.”

Sheena Davis is concerned about other issues, such as raising the retention rate and admission standards, changing the school’s colors and helping to improve the way the SGA functions.

“First, I would like to see the SGA work more like an actual democratic system,” she said, “meaning I would like to see more input from the student body. It’s really easy to say that the SGA is doing a good job, but that is an inside opinion. The way to really gauge is from outside opinion, and that’s the student body.”

Anna Lucas, a student working on O’Leary’s campaign, agreed about the need for student input in SGA affairs.

“It is important for students to vote primarily because of the money that SGA has control over,” she said. “A large part of student activities fee goes to the SGA and the appropriations committee, and they appropriate the money to different student organizations and clubs. Pretty much any student on campus is somehow affected by SGA.”

This year every student paid $45 to SGA. With other activities, they paid $1.5 million in student activities fees for the year.

Davis also wants to help bring the needs of VCU art students to the forefront.

“The art school is responsible for a lot of our school’s prestige and acclaim. We should take care of art students and show them that they are a valuable part of the VCU community,” she said. “Also my running mate, Senator Joel Harris, has begun work on a bill to begin renovations on the Pollak Building.”

The newly elected officers and their chosen 25 senators will have a full plate of issues to deal with in 2005-2006. Kahn said this makes it a larger election than the fall SGA election, which is to fill vacant seats.

“Some of the common and most popular issues that you hear that I believe the next SGA will be addressing would be parking concerns, extended library hours and increasing the SGA visibility on campus,” Kahn said.

O’Leary discussed some of the main issues he will be dealing with if elected. He mentioned the book-trading Web site, ending the visitation restrictions in residence halls, making VCU a safer place and the Small Community Initiative.

“The really important one is the Small Community Initiative,” O’Leary said. “It’s really an effort to develop a small community within each of the schools here at VCU, with the students, teachers and administration. It’s to encourage more group activities like cookouts and programs.

“What I would really like to envision is a student from the business school to wear a T-shirt from the business school and be really proud of it and feel like they are part of it. I think if you create pride at the individual school level, it helps generate pride at the university level.”

Davis is working on a program called Adopt-a-Freshman.

“One thing that will really help us out is to increase the admission standards, the retention rate and the graduation rate. I would like to improve the retention rate through a program called Adopt-a-Freshman,” Davis said. “The program will be a mentorship program between SGA leaders and incoming freshman to help improve the retention rate of first-year students.”