Dylan Lustig formally announced his candidacy for Student Association president to students in the Schine Student Center Atrium at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Lustig spoke for approximately eight minutes at a podium to an audience of a few dozen people. After introducing himself, Lustig said that during his time in SA he has focused on working to better communicate with his constituency.

Issues with constituency communication and fragmentation within SA have motivated Lustig to run for president, he said.

Lustig touched upon a bill he and SA Parliamentarian Eugene Law presented at Monday night’s assembly meeting, which mandated committees be formed to represent each home college in hopes of better communication with constituents. The bill, which passed 27-10, was contested by Lustig’s opponent Taylor Carr.

‘If we’re not going to pass something like that — something that’s going to better our organization, make it mandatory for our organization to do their job — then why are we here?’ Lustig said. ‘And I think it’s a good push for our organization that this bill did pass.’

If elected president, Lustig said he would focus on bettering communication both within the SA general assembly and outside the organization.

Lustig said another issue with connecting SA to the student body is the actual name of the organization. He said that because the term ‘Student Association’ is not being related with student government, one of his plans is to change the name of the organization to ‘Student Government Association.’

Until early 2000, SA was known as the Student Government Association.

Other goals Lustig touched upon pertained to the need for better safety on campus and the creation of a SA ‘signature program.’ Lustig said he would design this program as a campus-wide day of community service.

‘My goals as president are realistic and they are obtainable. That’s very important,’ Lustig said.

Lustig also exposed some opposition to Carr’s proposal of mandated community service hours for representatives. He said he believes this is something the assembly members should be doing already and that his signature program would work toward this.

After his speech, Lustig said he’s not nervous about being the first sophomore to run for SA president in approximately 20 years. He also said that because Carr is a junior, Carr feels that it is his ‘rite of passage’ to be president, as he is the right age.

Lustig said he could not wait any longer and that he had to run for president now.

Said Lustig: ‘I can’t watch SA do this anymore. We need to change our image and start acting like a student government, finally.’

rebarill@syr.edu

— Asst. News Editor Liz Sawyer contributed reporting to this article.

 

Published on October 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm