Campaign promises revisited

When he was running for SGA President, Jonathan Sachs was criticized for having an overly broad campaign platform. But as this year's elections approach and Sachs' term draws to a close, he and other Students Party officials say they wouldn't change a thing.

"I think any candidate who isn't ambitious in their promises should be faulted, because that's what you want," Sachs said. "You want a candidate who feels that they can get a lot done. You know everyone was criticizing our platform for being pie in the sky. ... Clearly it wasn't. I think students should expect their incoming [Student Government Associations] to be ambitious, or else there's just no point."

Sachs and SGA Speaker of the Legislature Matt Lyons said the SGA has addressed almost all the items on their platform, which covers nine topics including safety, housing and the environment.

But while the SGA is meant to represent the student voice, the organization ultimately has little control over the decisions made by the university on most issues, and the impact of their advocacy can be impossible to isolate from other pressures on legislators and administrators.

"Ultimately SGA doesn't really hold the trigger on much of anything," Sachs said. "My role is primarily to be that advocate, to be that liaison between the people who can pull that trigger and the students."

But despite the advocacy, not all the items on the SGA's wish list have come to fruition. Some of the SGA's work on safety, for example, has yet to be completed. Other proposals they promised to push for - like an all-you-can-eat meal plan - are under consideration, but don't appear to be near implementation.

Other promises were abandoned. The association decided not to lobby for a health care bill due to the economy. Some members of the SGA's finance committee said the organization was treating itself differently than other student groups, in violation of a campaign promise.

Lobbying

Lobbying is mentioned at length in the platform, and Sachs emphasized the issue in his State of the SGA Address at the end of last semester. In the platform, Students Party members said they would work to maintain the tuition freeze and pass legislation aimed to lower the cost of textbooks and ensure health care for all students. So far, the state senate has passed SGA-backed textbook legislation, but a proposed tuition freeze is up in the air after legislators proposed cutting the University System of Maryland's budget.

The party has collected signed letters from students in support of the textbook bill and the tuition freeze since the beginning of the semester and distributed them to representatives from students' home districts. A lobbying day in February in Annapolis drew about 75 students and more such days are scheduled, Sachs said.

But Sachs said the lagging economy caused the party to back off the health care issue.

"We made an executive decision to focus on the two things that as far as I know at this point are going to pass that have real significance, importance and timeliness to actually get done in our year," he said.

Dining

The Students Party pledged to work to eliminate focus dates, times when meal points are automatically reduced to a set amount. Late last semester, Dining Services agreed to allow all students to opt out of focus dates. However, even before the SGA elections last year, Dining Services Director Colleen Wright-Riva said she was considering eliminating focus dates.

The party also promised to explore the possibility of an all-you-can-eat dining plan. Dining Services Spokesman Bart Hipple said it was not clear whether students would want such a plan, however, especially because carryout is a popular option. For this reason, Sachs and Lyons said an all-you-can-eat plan may appear as a ballot referendum.

Transportation

At the beginning of the year, the Department of Transportation Services ended the Terp Taxi program, which the platform states had to be "eliminated or restructured" because of its high cost and low ridership.

Now Sachs is working with DOTS to create a new Terp Taxi program through an independent taxi company. Students could pay for the service with student IDs, he said. The taxi would hopefully go into effect close to the end of Sachs' term, he said.

DOTS also added the Silver Line bus route at the beginning of the year to travel to the areas most commonly frequented by NITE Ride and increased the frequency of buses, part of another campaign promise.

SGA Senior Vice President Joanna Calabrese, the only member of the House Party elected to an executive position last year, has been especially active on transportation issues.

At a meeting for non-mandatory student fees earlier this semester, DOTS decided to spend $103,000 to increase campus bike infrastructure, an issue Calabrese has focused on.

"The emphasis this year has been on alternative transportation rather than parking simply because we see that as the future and we think it's important to invest our time in that now so that it will be as effective as possible later," Calabrese said.

Student Groups

In the last line of the platform, the Students Party declares, "Anything that the SGA funds for itself should be funded for student groups."

At an SGA meeting earlier this semester, the legislature overwhelmingly voted to provide more than $4,000 for a leadership conference despite objections from two members of the SGA Finance Committee that a similar proposal from a student group would be rejected.

Sachs said he thought the committee should sometimes be overruled.

"We've only gone against [the rules] in places where there will be ultimate benefits to the student body and student groups," Sachs said. "As a rule, we should follow [the guidelines], and that's why the finance committee exists, but there are always exceptions. I think the student body would be disappointed if I held to that in every case."

Safety

Safety was a key issue in the campaign, and the cornerstone of the Students Party approach was SafetyUMD, a program designed to educate students about safety issues in a similar manner to AlcoholEdu. The legislature voted to work with the administration to make the program mandatory at a SGA meeting last month, but relatively few students have actually used the program.

The SGA has also worked on lighting issues. Sachs and Greek Legislator Gabi Band took a ride with College Park Mayor Stephen Brayman to pick out trouble spots. Band compiled a spreadsheet of 28 areas that need lighting attention. The three men will send a letter by Friday to Pepco, which owns the lights, asking the company to make repairs, Sachs said. New lights would have to be purchased by the city at a cost of $3,000 each, he said.

Band has also worked this year to put together a Greek neighborhood watch that would work to ensure safety. If all goes according to plan, Band said the program might start sometime next month.

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