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General Elections 2014: Meet the candidates

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Min Ji kim

By Rice Thresher Staff     2/4/14 6:00pm

Trent Navran

At Rice, I've been able to grow, challenge myself and open my eyes to infinite learning, both academic and experiential. I take pride in being a Rice student, and from the start have sought to make a positive impact in the Rice community. As a New Student Representative in the SA, I collaborated with residential college leadership to evaluate how to foster a culture that stimulates intellectual curiosity and challenges students' worldviews, ideas and aspirations. As a Senator, I formed the Entrepreneurship Collaborative, an entity that brings together student leaders, administrators and key faculty to improve programs that foster leadership development and entrepreneurial opportunities. These experiences allowed me to deepen my love for this university and affect tangible change on campus.

I hope to be your SA President for one simple reason: I want to ensure that Rice students feel empowered to own their college experience and realize the positive changes they may hope to make. Be it alleviating parking concerns through construction of a parking garage or rethinking how Rice online courses can enhance academics, I'll ensure that students are involved in administrative planning. Valuing transparency, communication and widespread participation, I'll expand and publicize the SA's new online petitioning system, which has the potential to magnify student initiatives, receive administrative responses and action, and hopefully put change in the hands of invested students. It would be an incredible honor to serve the Rice student body in this way, and I would be grateful to have your support.



What do you see as the most important issue for Rice undergraduates right now, and what would you do as president to address it?

I see issues such as creating a new Student Center, improving parking, and solving capacity problems within housing and academics as key concerns, but ultimately think that the overarching problem for undergraduates is actually having the ability and resources to address these issues. As president, I would improve the flow of information, ideas, and input between residential colleges and the Student Association to ensure that any student who desires to collaborate on pressing issues is able to contribute thoughts and learn about tangible ways to make change happen. Moreover, I will expand an online petitioning system to gain valuable campus-wide perspective on key student issues and work to make student interactions with administration more transparent, democratic, and influential.

 

Min Ji Kim

"We are stronger together." Rice Athletics has the "Together" campaign rallying the Rice community to support our athletes. It motivated us to achieve victories including the 2013 C-USA football championship. Using this great campaign as a model, I will focus on bringing our community together to foster more discussion from the student body as your SA President, but I can't reach this goal by myself. I need YOUR input. 

Throughout my experience in the SA, I learned how to work with the administration and how to reach out to my peers. Last year, as a SA Senator, I worked with Fondren Library to have its hours extend 24/7 during finals. This was only possible after listening to a student's concern over the hours before the change. Currently, I serve as a SA Student Life Committee Chair. A few of the projects that the committee is working on are offering a shuttle service to off-campus students and revamping the International Student Association.

To be a SA President who gets work done, I need to listen to the student body and meet with various people. I would implement an anonymous input system on the SA website, which I would check daily. I would attend cabinet meetings and have "office hours" during meals at colleges to talk to my fellow Rice owls. 

I have the experience and dedication to be an effective SA President, and I need YOUR support so that we can work together to enhance the Rice experience.

What do you see as the most important issue for Rice undergraduates right now, and what would you do as president to address it?

 From my experience as a Rice owl, I realize that the university is not united enough around being a Rice Owl. Rice Owls can successfully advocate issues when they are behind the same cause. I will aim to create one big community amongst the university. To achieve this, I need to listen to my fellow Rice Owls and this can be done by implementing an anonymous input system on the SA website, going to cabinet meetings, promoting SA's petition system, and having  "office hours" at colleges. I would continue to seek advice on how Rice can be more unified. More importantly, I will constantly be looking for things to improve upon. I will not be focusing the presidency around one just issue. I expect to focus on more issues by listening to students' concerns and working with the SA Exec board, officers (senators, committee chairs, directors), and college presidents. 

 

Referendums on the General Elections ballot:

Ratify the new SA constitution

The Committee on Constitutional Revisions reviewed the current constitution, revised it to reflect the current operations of the Student Association and removed outdated rules and procedures. This referendum will approve the revised constitution. The committee rewrote the document to eliminate ambiguous language and contradictions. The constitution document will also include the bylaws and will be organized by topic in order to increase user-friendliness.

Rice Environmental Society blanket tax

RES has proposed an annual $9 blanket tax per student. RES's mission is to address issues relating to sustainability and the environment and to further the SA's 100-year Sustainability plan. Funding from the blanket tax would cover the costs of club-sponsored sustainability projects. 

Rice Catalyst blanket tax

Rice Catalyst has proposed an annual $1 blanket tax per student. The Blanket Tax Standing Committee also recommended a sunset clause that would require the organization to apply for renewal of the tax after three years. An undergraduate scientific research journal, the Catalyst will use the tax to cover publication and TedxRiceU costs. If the Rice Catalyst receives blanket tax funding, it will become a subsidiary of the SA.

Honor Council Constitution amendment

The Honor Council proposed to amend the Constitution of the Honor System by removing Article XII, Section 1 and Article XXI. Under these articles, students accused of an Honor Code violation have the option to withdraw from Rice for two semesters instead of going through the court process. The Honor Council proposed this amendment in part because it believes that the articles in question could potentially allow students to escape the consequences of their actions. 

The SA presidential candidate statements abover were submitted by the candidates to the SA Director of Elections. Statements from candidates running for other positions can be viewed at www.ricethresher.org.



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