To the undergraduate community,
We’re a group of undergraduate senators consisting of Kobe Hopkins ’22, Tim Vrakas ’21, Micheal Brown ’22, Jonathan Lipman ’21 and Mià Theresa Bahr ’22 running for reelection. While we all have ambitious goals for a second term, we want to share what we’ve accomplished during our first term. We want to underscore the importance of reelecting senators who already have worked closely with the administration. During our first term, it was necessary to spend at least half of our term learning about the inner-workings of the University. This time, we hope to hit the ground running right at the beginning of our term with our vision and goals for the Senate and the ASSU as a whole: building relationships with key stakeholders, conserving institutional knowledge, affecting a culture shift, developing a bureaucracy and providing leadership development.
Emergency support during COVID-19
- Senators Vrakas, Hopkins and Brown created the ASSU Support Fund during the COVID-19 crisis, which provided $191,000 ($65,000 donated from the ASSU reserves and discretionaries, $126,000 donated from VSOs) in support of more than 1,400 students.
- Senator Lipman presented student feedback on the proposed special spring grading policies to the Faculty Senate.
Sexual violence prevention and survivor support
- Senator Lipman, with members of the Executive Team and the Senate, wrote a report calling for the University to provide emergency housing to survivors of domestic violence, implement a single point of first-contact, ensure four years of bystander intervention training and implement an empirically vetted suite of prevention measures. The report can be found here.
- Senator Bahr authored a widely co-sponsored resolution against survivors being treated by the same counselor as their perpetrators and demanding an independent Title IX review. The resolution can be found here.
Educational reform
- Senator Lipman presented student feedback on the future of the major and first-year experience as part of the long-range planning process.
- Senator Lipman authored a resolution that was instrumental in modifying the charge of the Committee of 10 to include consideration of student intent judicial proceedings.
Mental health
- Senator Brown engaged with various directors at Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and Vaden Health Center to discuss the general quality of health care services available to students and also met with CAPS’ newest counselors of color to discuss community concerns and programs that might increase student engagement and knowledge of resources.
- Senator Lipman worked with Vianna Vo in the Executive Cabinet to create a 50 Ways to Take a Break @ Stanford poster, which will be hung in residences when students return to campus.
Supporting VSOs and student activist movements
- Senators Hopkins and Brown fought for African and African American Studies (AAAS) departmentalization and increased funding for existing community centers, responded to last summer’s noose incident, piloted the Education Against Racial Hatred program, discussed a mandatory first-year racial sensitivity training course, helped establish IDEAL paid student internships, established the Acts of Intolerance Review Board and created an online form to aid on-campus hate crime reports.
- Senator Bahr served on the Education Against Hate and Violence Committee, advising administrators on how best to mitigate hate crimes on Stanford’s campus.
- Senator Lipman worked with Stanford Womxn in Law and The Stanford Eugenics Project to bring their concerns to the Senate.
- Senator Lipman worked to bring greater institutional memory to the ASSU by creating a Librarian position.
- Senator Brown serves as an ASSU representative on the New Organization Committee, where he fought to increase the representation of the student’s voice in the process for selecting, particularly for arts organizations, sports organizations, and ethnic organizations.
- In addition, Senator Lipman worked with Senator Vrakas to create a process to allow VSOs to petition for late funding.
Managing funding for VSOs
- Senators Vrakas (chair), Brown and Hopkins served on the Appropriations Committee which allocated $3 million in funding, to 95 Annual Grants groups and over 100 other VSOs.
- Senator Vrakas worked to develop Multi-Year Funding plans for large groups in need of stable budgets across multiple years.
Sincerely,
Mià Bahr ’22, parliamentarian (she/her/hers), endorsed by SOCC
Micheal Brown ’22, appropriations committee member (he/him/his): platform, endorsed by SOCC, Daily, and FLIP
Kobe Hopkins ’22, treasurer (he/him/his), endorsed by SWR
Jonathan Lipman ’21, Faculty Senate representative (he/him/his): platform, endorsed by SOCC, Daily and FLIP
Tim Vrakas ’21, appropriations committee chair (he/him/his), endorsed by The Daily
An earlier version of this stated that Senator Lipman worked with Stanford Womxn in Law and The Stanford Eugenics Project to bring concerns to the Faculty Senate. These concerns were brought to the Senate not the Faculty Senate. The Daily regrets this error.
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