PLATFORM
Our students accomplish amazing things, inside and outside the classroom, around and beyond campus. We need to elevate and amplify student concerns and needs by establishing clear mechanisms to uplift student voices. By ensuring and promoting inclusion and accessibility, we will empower our students to follow their passions, explore their interests, and do what they do best -- creating a vibrant and diverse Colonial community.
Bringing your voice to the table.
Your Voice for Inclusion
It is crucial that we make sure GW represents and supports all students and communities. Our diversity is what makes us strong -- we would not be who we are without students from every background and experience.
Encouraging Faculty Diversity
Strengthening Peer Educators
GW’s faculty should represent the diversity of our student body. The Provost’s office has moved towards encouraging the Deans of each school to establish plans to ensure diversity in admissions, hiring and retention to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity across the University. In 2012, the most recent year for which data was published, no faculty members were Pacific Islander, less than 1 percent were Native American, about 3 percent were Hispanic, about 6 percent were black, and about 14 percent were Asian. Our student population is more diverse than this. I want to work both with the administration and with you to move this plan forward. That is why I propose an SA-led student campaign to spearhead this effort in the coming years, to ensure that we have a faculty that represents the diversity of us, the student body.
Peer education programs allow students to learn about important societal issues from their peers in a safe and accepting space. By unifying the efforts of the student organizations that have successfully promoted peer education programs in the past, we can better recognize, discuss, and enrich our understanding of the many issues that have arisen on our campus in recent years. Learning from each other will allow us to become a more supportive Colonial community. Additionally, peer educator programs will allow the SA to better you by providing additional perspectives from which to draw in addressing key issues.
With GW’s amazing location, you deserve access to affordable transportation in order to take advantage of the DC area. I will strive to provide affordable transportation by securing a discounted opt-in student WMATA pass that includes Paratransit and partnering with Capital Bikeshare to provide student memberships. Financial barriers should not prohibit you from interning or volunteering in the community. I will work to establish a volunteer transportation fund to subsidize travel costs for students who are volunteering throughout the District.
Making sure you are empowered to achieve academic success at GW begins on day one with course registration. That means ensuring that you have information on textbook fees and adequate course descriptions. I first recognized that this was an issue in the Elliott School, where only five out of 46 courses had a specific description in the Bulletin and have been working with the school to combat this issue during my time as a Senator. My plan is to work with each school to provide an online course description PDF with an estimated cost disclaimer for each class so that you can make informed decisions about the courses you take.
Your Voice for Accessibility
Improving Academic Transparency
You need to have the tools and information to make the most out of your GW experiences. This means ensuring that you have the support to succeed in the classroom and outside Foggy Bottom.
Your Voice for Empowerment
Establishing Dean's Student Advisory Councils
You should be able to voice your concerns -- whether that's to the administration or the Student Association. Regardless of who you are or what you are involved in on campus, you deserve to have your voice heard.
In a university of nearly 25,000 total students, it is easy for individual voices to get lost in the crowd. Regardless of your degree level, time status, or course of study, your voice matters and deserves to be heard by the Administration of this university. During my time in the SA, I recognized this issue in the Elliott School and pushed to find a solution. I worked with administrators to create a Dean’s Advisory Council that will launch this spring. This council will consist of both undergraduate and graduate students and will meet multiple times throughout the semester to discuss pressing issues that the student body faces. I want to expand this program to each of GW’s schools, creating permanent bodies that promote students’ voices.
Clarifying Student Org Finances
Student org funding affects all members of the GW community. During the past few years, the SA Finance Committee has worked to create an abundance of resources to streamline the process of applying for org funding. I will work with the Finance Committee to centralize these resources and assure that student orgs and their leaders understand how the system works. I will update the SA website to ensure that all materials are presented in an easy to understand manner, publicize a point of contact for questions, and utilize Facebook and the SA newsletter so orgs will receive clearer information regarding the finance process. All student orgs should have an equal opportunity to receive funding. We need to make it simpler, not harder, for orgs to obtain the support they need to hold programming and events for their members.
Promoting Sustainability
In a campus filled with passionate advocates for sustainable practices, the attention and support of the University should align with our interest in protecting our environment. During my time at GW, I have repeatedly attended meetings with the sustainability community to discuss issues like fossil fuel divestment, on-campus waste disposal and reducing GW’s use of printing. I strongly support the creation of a task force within the Board of Trustees to evaluate the university’s current investments and create a plan for divestment from fossil fuels. Furthermore, I will work to ensure that sustainability continues to be a priority of the new GW administration under President LeBlanc.
Encouraging Faculty Diversity
Strengthening Peer Educators
Supporting Student Identities
Dean's Student Advisory Councils
Clarifying Org Finance Processes
Promoting Sustainability
Improving Academic Transparency
Providing Affordable Transportation
Expanding Mental Health Services
Supporting Student Identities
You deserve to be represented the way you want to represent yourself, both in-person and in-document. While the university has made progress recently on better representing student identities in official documentation, we still lack the ability to change gender and personal pronouns in documentation. I will work with the Administration and students on our campus to simplify this process so students' identities can be reflected in the classroom. GW students deserve this system to be simplified so that all identities can be better represented.
Expanding Mental Health Services
As college students, our mental health should be top priority for both us and the university. Currently, the Colonial Health Center only offers mental health services between 10am-3pm, hours that are not accessible for students who work, intern, volunteer, or take classes all day long. I will work to expand hours for mental health services to ensure that evening sessions are offered at least once a week. We need to make sure that every student has the mental health support they need to succeed at GW.