Becoming United hopes to revitalize SG with new faces

This is the second in a series of stories examining the slates running for Student Government executive board for the 2013-14 academic year.

College of Arts and Sciences junior Edmo Gamelin, who is running for Student Government president with the slate Becoming United, said his slate is centered around creating a new culture regarding SG on campus that fosters a strong student voice.

“Our name is definitely what we want to do,” he said. “… Basically, what we want is to unify the student body through various methods.”

Becoming United began campaigning Friday for the 2013-14 SG executive board elections. They are set to compete against two other slates, Can’t B Without U and The BU Ignition.

The slate also includes CAS freshman Richa Kaul seeking the position of executive vice president, School of Management sophomore Fiona Chen seeking vice president of finance and SMG junior Thatcher Hoyt seeking vice president of internal affairs.

“We are four people being elected to represent 16,000,” Kaul said. “We see that as such a huge responsibility, and we want to make sure to give everybody his or her due representation.”

The slate’s primary goals include understanding and serving the student body’s needs, representing all student groups adequately and promoting consistent communication to create concrete change, according to the slate’s website.

“It’s just a matter of tapping into all the resources we have as individuals and as an organization,” Gamelin said. “… It’s about outreach.”

Part of the slate’s outreach plan involves sending SG senators to meetings with student groups across campus on a regular basis, Gamelin said. The slate also plans to visit the George Sherman Union Link daily to communicate with student groups stationed there.

“It’s a matter of making sure at least one of us everyday is going through these organizations [in the GSU Link] and really understanding what they need,” Gamelin said. “… In order to understand what the students need, you really need to open up the dialogue, and that’s really something that we want to do, too.”

Becoming United officials will hold four town hall meetings their first two months in office if elected, Kaul said. The meetings would focus on topics including safety, tuition, representation in administrative decisions and other student concerns.

“A goal for the town hall meetings is to promote more communication among the student body, make the student body more aware of what’s going on around campus and what issues that we’re facing and to activate the students that can be active,” Chen said.

The slate hopes to better communicate students’ needs with the administration to prevent incidents such as the controversy surrounding gender-neutral housing, Chen said.

“We don’t want that to happen again,” she said, referring to the administration’s decision to halt the initiative at the end of fall 2012. “And we believe that if we are able to unify the whole student body so that we can be a stronger, more solidified student voice, things will get done more efficiently.”

Becoming United officials hope to hold regular meetings with administrators to make sure they are up to date on student concerns, Kaul said.

“They need to know what the hype is right now,” she said. “It’s the idea of communicating with them and setting up regular meetings with various members of the administration.”

Gamelin said alcohol-related issues, currently a prevalent topic among both students and administrators at BU, are bred by society. He said it is important to make sure students are knowledgeable and prepared to handle them.

“The administration needs to realize that it’s unfortunate that this is the norm, but by putting all these systems in place to try to stop it, people are just going to find other ways to do it,” he said. “That’s what we’ve already experienced thus far.”

The slate will not focus on changing the internal workings of SG, Kaul said.

“We don’t want to spend next year focusing on internal change,” she said. “We really want to spend next year focusing on everything outside of Student Government.”

The slate would speak to student groups during its first two months in office before creating an official agenda for SG, Kaul said.

“We want students to determine what their Student Government does for them,” she said.

Hoyt said each member of Becoming United is relatively new to SG and can bring in a new perspective.

“I feel like we can really connect with people a lot more,” he said. “… All of us came into Student Government from other student organizations that we’ve always been a part of, and I just think it’s a breath of fresh air and fresh life into how everything is structured right now.”