Peacock and Bakke. You might ask, what do we have to offer? We have a combined sixteen years of leadership experience between Stanford and our undergraduate universities. Thus, we will bring a new approach to running the ASSU and to creating professional working relationships with the administration. Our goal is to work on issues that impact students instead of creating initiatives that bear little chance of fruition.

Our first actions as executive will be reform. Within our own organization, we need to drastically reduce the size and stipends of the cabinet, including those of the president and vice president by half. Trust must be restored in the ASSU by assuring students that finances are handled properly at all levels of government. To do this, accountability of elected officials must be restored. Further, the relationship of the executive with the administration must be revamped. We will work to establish relationships so that we are able to work towards common goals. It is our view that the main priority of the executive should be advocating for students to the administration. With our wealth of experience, we are by far the most qualified slate for quickly developing relationships conducive to implementing change.

The second goal of the executive should be to facilitate the passionate and knowledgeable VSOs to achieve their goals. To accomplish this, we will implement a new Executive initiative grant program. This program will consist of ourselves and our cabinet calling for proposals by VSOs on campus that target immediate and important issues. We will use the executive funds to directly support these VSOs in accomplishing their efforts which otherwise may not addressed. In contrast to previous years, this program will reduce redundancies within the Executive by utilizing the existing infrastructure and knowledge of the many capable VSOs on campus.

While it is impossible for us to predict the most pressing issues for the 2010 – 2011 academic year, we do have ideas of pertinent issues. Our general focus will be on issues that directly affect the day to day lives of students. For example, we want to address the effectiveness of the undergraduate academic advising program. Having been undergraduates and as current graduate students, we understand issues that affect the system from both sides.  In addition to working with the administration on this topic, we believe that one solution will be to leverage the talent of the student body to assist in the advising process. Upperclassmen can offer advice to underclassmen, and graduate students can offer insight to upperclassmen about opportunities after Stanford. The above is just one example of the approach we will bring to student advocacy.

In summary, we want to decrease wasteful practices of the Executive while increasing the ability of the ASSU to impact student life on campus. On April 8 and 9, you have the choice to re-elect the status quo or to choose a new path for the future of the ASSU.

Contact Ryan Peacock at [email protected] and Jonathan Bakke at [email protected].