Jon Barnhart has big plans for the Student Association, but he needs all the help he can get.

‘Let’s be real, I’ve laid out a big platform. There are a lot of things I want to do,’ he said.

Barnhart was elected SA President in November, beating opponent Hari Iyer with 80 percent of the vote. During this year’s election, 18.5 percent of the student body voted. Barnhart said he hopes to involve many more students than that in SA’s 54th session.

Barnhart has not yet announced who will be on his cabinet. The interviews he held for all cabinet positions ended Saturday. The positions were open to students within and outside of SA. It’s important for every one of his cabinet members to be comfortable communicating with both students and administrators, he said.

His campaign slogan, ‘Own Your University,’ challenged students to reach out to SA. If SA representatives don’t know what issues students care about, there is only so much they can do, he said.

‘I can push SA members to their brink but we’re never going to get everybody’s issue,’ Barnhart said. ‘The only way we can properly represent everyone is if the students are coming back to us, too.’

In addition to pursuing student-driven initiatives, Barnhart has his own goals for the 54th session. He said he plans on improving safety both on and off campus and pushing the university to adopt lock-in tuition. He also wants to minimize segregation on Syracuse University’s campus by increasing dialogue among students.

MayFest is an issue Barnhart will continue to address into the 54th session. He and current SA President Larry Seivert have had weekly meetings with Vice President and Dean of Student Affairs Thomas Wolfe regarding MayFest. As of now, there are no new developments.

Seivert worked hard to form relationships with university administrators, and Barnhart said that will be a tremendous help to his administration. Seivert has been helpful in the transition phase and has introduced Barnhart to as many university administrators as possible, Barnhart said.

While Barnhart will keep some aspects of the 53rd session, he wants to run the association much differently than Seivert, he said. He plans to start with changes within the SA office in Schine Student Center, he said.

Barnhart said he wants to make the SA office a friendlier environment for students who come in with concerns. Every member of SA is required to work a certain number of hours in the office, depending on a person’s position. If a student walks into the office and someone doesn’t immediately talk to them, that’s a problem, he said.

Every SA representative and cabinet member should be on the same page regarding what the association is doing, which did not always happen in the 53rd session, he said. SA Parliamentarian Robel Yemiru used to ask Barnhart ‘What are we doing?’ and expected everyone to be able to answer, Barnhart said.

‘It is a question that I will make sure, next semester, my members are prepared to answer,’ Barnhart said. Yemiru ‘expects the president to be able to answer that question and the newly elected assembly members to be able to answer that question in the same way. We want everybody to know what everybody else is working on.’

Barnhart will run the association at a more grassroots level than Seivert did, said Neal Casey, Seivert’s chief of staff.

‘I think a big problem that we’ve run into in the past, and one that I can foresee if it’s not properly addressed, is thinking that once you get elected into a position you no longer need to talk to (students),’ Barnhart said.

Barnhart said a non-traditional idea to reach students would be to create a podcast about SA’s work.

It’s impossible to say what new initiatives will arise during the semester, Barnhart said, and he wants a big team behind him to tackle anything that may come up. While his campaign was time consuming, he said he knows it was nothing compared to what lies ahead.

‘As soon as I was elected I was like ‘Oh yes! The campaign is over!’ Then I realized ‘No, you still need to be out there talking to people,” he said. ‘You still need to be touching base with every student that you can.’

kronayne@syr.edu

Published on December 18, 2009 at 12:00 pm