The Student Association President Boris Gresely’s most successful initiatives were smaller goals with concrete plans. Moving forward, Aysha Seedat and Jane Hong should mirror this approach as they prepare to enter office in the Fall 2015 semester.

Gresely has served as the president of the 58th session of SA at Syracuse University for three semesters. This is because the student body approved a new constitution in November 2013, which realigned the presidential term with the academic calendar, not the calendar year. Gresely, a senior political science and public policy major, said his time in office has been spent carrying out ideas under his plan to “reform, reconnect and redirect” the student body and university.

However, this mentality of tackling large, abstract problems on campus can prove unproductive. This is seen in Gresely’s proposed plans to assess tuition increases and to upgrade the Department of Public Safety uniforms, which never came to completion.

Gresely’s most successful initiatives were smaller goals, including the installation of more charging stations on campus and gaining access to emailing the SU student body.

Also, the use of emails under Gresely’s administration effectively improved SA’s communication with students, which is important when the role of SA is to act as the voice of the students.

Communication was a strong point of Gresely’s involvement in The Cuse Conference, an initiative proposed by Gresely to bridge communication gaps between students, faculty and administrators. This was also reflected in Gresely’s collaboration with Fast Forward Syracuse, a three-part master plan to improve SU by Chancellor Kent Syverud.

Gresely took over as SA president when Syverud first took office. Since that time, there has been close collaboration between SA and the administration. As president, Gresely represented the student body in the steering committee for the academic strategic plan and the undergraduate experience workgroup.

Gresely’s emphasis on collaboration is also seen in the fact that the 58th session of SA passed the most resolutions of any other in SA history.

Although Gresely had the advantage of working with an extra semester, Seedat must model her time in office to this productive nature. This can be done by focusing on smaller, more realistic goals with concrete plans in order to improve the student experience.

The role of the Student Association is not to tackle grand issues such as tuition increases, but to hone in on the most realistic ways to improve student life at SU. Moving forward, SA should strive to make smaller, but impactful changes on campus.

Published on April 26, 2015 at 10:58 pm