Throughout the past few months, Larry Seivert has presented an extensive campaign to the student body and was elected the next Student Association president Nov. 13. Although Seivert has stuck by his platform, he also addresses the obstacles and reality of implementing his ideas in the association’s 53rd session.

Seivert has been involved with SA since his freshman year. He said he sought out the organization after realizing there was a void in his life at Syracuse University. Seivert was a member of his student government in high school, and said he missed serving the students.

Now, after actively participating in the past three sessions, Seivert said he’s ready to lead. His achievements include being the chair of the University Affairs Committee the spring of his freshman year, serving on the Cabinet under Ryan Kelly’s administration, working on the transportation task force that resulted in 10-minute interval bus schedules, and being involved in the committee that achieved a three-year extension for the swim team, whose program was set to be cut after last season.

Seivert’s platform incorporated five issues during the campaign, including free off-campus transportation, town-hall style meetings for greater student outreach, buses to away athletic games, a refined budget process and more merit-based scholarships. Four out these five components are still very realistic, explained Seivert.

Though he wanted to increase the number of merit-based scholarships on campus, Seivert attributed the unlikelihood of this to the current state of the economy. Seivert said that in these difficult times, the focus should be on need-based scholarships so students can stay at SU.

Newly elected Vice President Erik Bortz comes to the position with less experience than Seivert. He has been in SA since September. Bortz said he agrees with Seivert’s platform.

Though Seivert succeeded in making his goals for next session known during this year’s campaign, many people may still be curious about what happened in last year’s campaign, when Seivert decided to be a last-minute write-in candidate for the presidency and lost to current president Marlene Goldenberg.

Originally, Seivert was signed on to be Goldenberg’s chief of staff.

‘I actually sat down with Marlene and told her, before I made my official announcement, that I was the write-in candidate that was creating some hype about the campus,’ Seivert said.

Though he insists that he and Goldenberg remain civil and have a good working relationship, he admits that his last-minute decision was based on the fact that they had different goals for SA. But Seivert said he wants to put it in the past, and focus on the future.

That future now includes his SA presidency. It was hard to miss Seivert’s face on posters and postcards in almost all of the dining halls. Seivert said he purchased 6,000 postcards and more than 200 posters for his campaign, even though he was the only candidate running.

Seivert is optimistic about being able to achieve all of his goals. He said that when he sat down to develop his campaign platform, he asked himself, ‘It’s the end of next year, what have I accomplished?’ From there, he said he made his platform on goals he believes are realistic to achieve.

Bortz said he shares the same goals as Seivert and believes they are realistic, but not without the help of other people.

‘The general misconception about people who are holding office is they themselves get things done, or they have to get things accomplished,’ Bortz said. ‘That is where you fail in public office.’

Past SA leaders have been as optimistic as Seivert and Bortz but have still run out of time to succeed in accomplishing all of their goals. Seivert said he hopes that by increasing the students’ voice on campus, this won’t be the case for them.

‘The first thing that we’re going to be doing is making sure that we’re getting out to students to talk about different issues,’ Seivert said.

Another vital component to his platform’s success will be working with different levels of administration.

‘They’re willing to listen, and they want to hear what the students think,’ Seivert said. ‘That really is our greatest asset to accomplish a lot of things this session.’

His mission may still seem impractical due to monetary constraints, but Seivert seemed assured that ‘it’s not as expensive as it looks.’ Seivert said that by using resources the campus already has available, his plans will not cost students more money.

Funding for organizations is only one of the areas that need improvement in SA, according to Bortz.

‘There are a lot of problems we’re going to have to tackle dealing with taking another look at the way organizations are funding, how we’re going to hold meetings, and the professionalism of Student Association,’ Bortz said.

Seivert plans to work at solving the funding issue by refining the budget process. Though he said he understands there will always be disputes on how the money is allocated, he believes that student organizations would be more understanding if they knew how much SA was able to allot.

‘We need to make sure that we are providing more opportunities to actually educate them on the entire process,’ said Seivert. Part of this reevaluation in Seivert’s terms includes drafting a different financial vision, which provides guidelines for the Finance Board’s budget allotment. This year, he was one of the two SA members who voted against it.

With a lot on his plate, Seivert is getting ready to step into his new office. He said he plans on sitting down with Goldenberg next week to talk more in-depth about different issues concerning SA.

Though Seivert is taking on larger responsibilities starting in January, he said if he could only accomplish one thing while in office, it would be to increase the student voice on campus. Bortz agrees this is of utmost importance, and promises that SA will reach out to the students next session.

‘Some say talk is cheap,’ said Seivert. ‘I say it’s effective.’

mequalte@syr.edu

Published on December 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm