The Boston University Student Union is aiming to create a stronger on-campus presence for the 2010-2011 school year, Union leaders said.
Union President Arthur Emma said that after talking to student advocacy groups at other universities, he realized that BU has "by far the weakest student union."
This year, the group hopes to "really turn the Student Union into a strong organization that truly serves the students," the College of Arts and Sciences senior said in a phone interview. To make itself more accessible to the student body, the Student Union is moving its office to the second floor of the George Sherman Union, in hopes that students will get more involved and attend their meetings.
"All these opportunities have been overlooked in the past so we want to take advantage of those," he said.
Last spring, Emma, CAS senior Daniel Ellis and SMG senior Benjamin Noble ran on a change platform as the Renew BU slate. Students responded to their sticking points of higher print quotas, more reliability from the BU Shuttle and dining hall reform by handing them a landslide victory over BUnited and an unofficial all-Greek slate.
The group is in the process of selecting a secretary from a group of about 16 applicants. The Renew BU slate ran without a secretary, and the winning candidate from BUnited chose not to take the position.
The new executive board also plans on working much closer with the Programming Council. PC Vice President Vincent Squillace, a CAS senior, will be chairing Union's event committee.
"Hopefully that will help us get our name out there," Union Vice President Ellis said. "[We want to] really be there as a useful service for the student groups." The Union kicked off the school year with the GSU Takeover Party on Aug. 30, which was primarily targeted freshmen but welcomed all undergraduates.
Thousands of students went to the GSU, which featured free food, an acoustic cafe and a dance party.
The Union executive board also launched a GPS system in August for the BUS so that students can track online or on their iPhones when the next shuttle will come.
Another project the three executive board members have been working on is a voter registration form called TurboVote, which they have been developing in partnership with graduate students at Harvard University's Kennedy School.
The program is set up as an online database so that after a student completes the registration form online, they will receive it in the mail and will only need to send it in the pre-stamped envelope, which comes along with the form.
Emma said that their goal with TurboVote is "to get 10,000 BU students to register on our online database, and then to register to vote or to vote through our online absentee ballot process."
Union has permission to send emails to the entirety of the student body in order to register students before the November election.
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