SUNDEEP MUTGI Junior Double Major- Political Science and Psychology Running Mate- Kevin Basch Experience in USG- vice president, at-large senator, proxy senator Experience in other campus organizations- Student Alumni Connection, Dance Marathon, president and founder of Coalition of Servant Leaders, Alumni Laureate Scholars and President’s Leadership Academy. What are your primary goals? ‘Well if elected president I think it’s difficult to say everything that we want to do because one thing that I found out as vice president this year is that a lot of issues sort of pop up.’ And so broadly speaking we’re going to grab those issues when they come.” Section O- ‘One is the over-occupancy issue. Bowling Green has a law that says no more than three unrelated people per home.’ We don’t think that’s fair because a lot of those homes have more than three bedrooms, which means rent goes up. So we would like to see that number moved to four, a little bit of a compromise.’ Campus beautification- ‘We want to continue campus beautification and take it to the next level. This year we’ve done a lot of initiatives to help inspire things like the landscaping around the Union, trees around dumpsters, that kind of stuff. But we’ve also raised a lot of money to get new signage on the Bowling Green overpass and we’re going to look into getting money to renovate buildings like Hanna, University and Moseley in conjunction with the centennial campaign. Dining Services- ‘Beyond that we are also trying to focus a lot on dining options. There is a lot of big changes in dining from management to actual services provided. I think one example that we are using is Wendy’s contract is up in 2010 and whether or not they will be replaced by someone else or if they’re going to renew their contract. We’re going to have a lot of student input on things like that.’ ‘And then lastly a platform that you know we talked about was something that we really wanted to push next year is that we have a strong tradition between Kevin and myself. I’m the vice president now; Kevin’s a member of [executive board] and a senator. There’s not going to be a lot of transition, so we’re going to be able to hit the ground running. And I think that is a platform in and of itself.’ What do you feel is USG’s role? ‘Well the paperwork will tell you USG’s role is to be a liaison between the students and the administration, but I think USG’s primary role beyond that is to be an advocate for students.’ And that would be whether it pertains to the city whether it pertains to academics or just student living in general, it’s to fight for the rights of students and fight for benefits for students and trying to just help them out anyway we can and that ranges on issues, but that’s the primary focus.’ How do you personally reach out to the student body? ‘The way I like to get out to students is in a lot of different ways. One would just be classes, people I’m sitting next to; I try to talk to them as much as I can and to sort of get a pulse for where campus is.’ Beyond that I know I also worked really closely with our beat reporter just through USG trying to get agendas the same.’ We call back and forth trying to get different articles posted on issues that USG is doing.’ So we’ve really tried to utilize the news sources this year.’ ROBIN EMMELHAINZ Senior Major- Political Science Running Mate- Enoch Wu Experience in USG- USG organizational liaison committee chair, USG off-campus senator, Experience in other campus organizations- member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, president of the Recreational Athletic Student Union, member of Hall Council and Latino Student Union. What are your primary goals? Community- There has been some animosity between the student body and residents of Bowling Green over recent years that Emmelhainz said he would like to mend. ‘And some of the results of this animosity are that things like they are enforcing the zoning laws restricting students to three unrelated [persons] per house, which means students get evicted, etc.’ Students contribute to this animosity from residents by not respecting Bowling Green, Emmelhainz said. ‘Students do not treat this town like they treat their hometown. You don’t throw your beer cans on your parent’s lawn, it just wouldn’t happen. And at the same time residents look at students and say they’re only here for four years they’re not really members of Bowling Green and really it is a college town. He cited a possible solution as setting up community service projects for campus organizations to get involved in Learning- ‘We’re here to learn and one of the things that BG is kind of behind the times in [is in] terms of classroom facilities, in terms of learning environment and not being as nice as it could be, as nice as many of our sister schools.’ ‘I know we can’t build new buildings and we don’t have the money for that, but let’s work with the University to find some new solutions’hellip;Let’s kind of improve our classrooms and let’s also work towards more technology.’ Let’s have professors use Blackboard , I know they won’t be incredibly happy with me saying this, but you know these facilities, technologies and resources are there for students to learn better, so let’s use them.’ Our Student Voice- ‘There are two parts to that, number one transparency. We’ve got to work to make sure what the administration is doing is transparent, is visible to the students. And then number two is that what USG is doing with the administration is also visible to students.’ What do you feel is USG’s role? ‘I believe USG’s role is to serve as the liaison between the students and the administration of the University and specifically in that role USG should represent the student’s interests, student’s concerns [and] issues to the administration and ensure that the administration is transparent on issues to the students; so the students really have a voice and not only a voice, but also actually input into decisions the University makes before they’re made as opposed to giving input and then having decisions made that had nothing to do with the input.’ How do you personally reach out to the student body? ‘I go out to organizations, speak to organizations, asking for issues and concerns and we have spoken to at least a third of the organizations on campus this year, so 300 plus organizations. It’s impossible to ever get to all of them you know schedulewise.’ Also as a senator in addition to speaking to organizations on major issues, like the Stroh Center. As I said before I personally spoke to about 160 people, 162 I think, which I kind of figure like when you kind of think about it like any politician anywhere is never going to speak to that much of their constituency.’ As an off-campus senator I represent probably 600-800 students, so if I’m speaking to 150 that’s what 20-25 percent.’