Aaron Rak is a junior majoring in civil engineering. He is running for SGA president.
Q: Why is it that you’re running for president?
A: Well, I thought it’d be something fun to do. There’s been a lot of things I’ve been wanting to get changed here, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity for me to have that be known. Like what do I want to get changed? How can I be an agent of change? So I think this is a great opportunity for me.
Q: Why do you think you are the best candidate for the position?
A: Well, I think I’d be a great fit because I’m an outsider. We look at the SGA right now, and the only thing I can point to that they do is the sidewalk, crosswalk thing where it says, “look up legends” or something. That’s the only thing that I know that the SGA has ever done the whole time I’ve been here, and if I’m going to be in the SGA, the president, I’ll do a lot. I’ll do a lot more than that, and it’s going to be something we will all be proud about, and we’ll look at and we’ll be like, “Wow, we can actually do something rather than just doing a pedestrian sign.”
Q: What are your campaign’s key platforms?
A: So I think that there’s two main things that I’m really going after. The first thing is parking. We come to campus, we pay all this money to come here, and we can’t really park here. If we try to park here, you have to pay a super high fee. It’s like hundreds of dollars per year, or we have to pay exorbitant rates for hourly parking in like three areas of the whole campus. Or if we don’t do that, we’re just rolling the dice to see if these people come out, like shadow police and just give us some violations. So I think that what we need to do is make sure that we have better parking for students, cheaper permits, and then also for coming here on the weekends or right on the Fridays, we’re not just completely scared to park here, like there’s clear communication from the parking guys that, “Hey, you can park wherever, we’ll open the gates up” or whatever. “If you want to come here outside of hours, you’re more than welcome to.”
Q: What two specific initiatives you want to accomplish, and what time frames do you hope to accomplish them in?
A: The parking, I want to get everything done by August. So that means I want to talk with all these people, the Department of Finance and Operations, I want to get this all ironed out before we get the emails they send out. “Oh, you want to buy a parking permit? Here’s what you do.” I want to make sure that this is all in place before that. And then for the course change, that’s a second part of my platform. I want to make sure that’s also done before August when we all come back in the fall. We need to make sure that that’s done because that’s something that was very important to me. We even can meet them in the middle a little bit with that. But that is something we want to make sure we get done by August.
Q: How do you plan to adapt if your initial plan for achieving those goals doesn’t go how you hope?
A: Well, we’re more than welcome to work with them to compromise. Like, maybe meet me in the middle with the course fee. The first time can be free, and then after that it can be whatever. Or if you have some extra circumstances, like “I have a course that I’m bringing in from summer school,” we can work something out or very least we could have it maybe be like $10, something more sensible. The parking, same thing. We will try to work with them and make sure that is good and something equitable for all of us, something that we’d be really proud to stamp our signature on and make sure that it’s going to benefit all the students.
Q: What experiences have you had on campus that you believe will help you in the role if elected?
A: Well, I think that the whole fact that I’m an outsider to the whole thing would help me out a lot because I know how to get things done, and I’m not just bogged down by what the SGA thing is. We’re not just going to have a kumbaya the whole year, because that’s what it’s always been. It’s just been a big kumbaya. And we’re just sitting and kind of clapping our hands even if we’re doing nothing. I think that the fact that I’m going to go in as an outsider, that would be great, because I’m going to go in there. I’ll shake it up. I’ll shake it up like it’s never been shaken up before, and I’d be really happy to do that. I think that that would make us really proud of what we’d be able to do.
Q: How will you represent all students, even those incredibly different from you?
A: I think that would be just kind of talking to them, sitting in front of the lecture hall, like if I’m sitting in front of some business building, some engineering building, I’ll just sit there like, “Tell me, just talk to me or something. Tell me your perspectives.” And I think that being open to that would help me represent that, because there’s a lot of ideas. People come up to me with new ideas. I’m like, “I’ve never thought of it that way.” Part of being an engineer is thinking of how to approach problems from different perspectives. So I think that if you come with me with different perspectives, I’ll be able to kind of look at it a little differently, “Oh, I never thought of it that way.” Or maybe a completely new issue that I didn’t even really think about, and then I’m going to be like, “It’s super important to me, or this is something that could be really important to other people.” So I’m going to fight like hell for that. If I feel like it meets that need.
Q: What’s something that isn’t currently a part of your platform that you do you think will benefit the majority of the student body?
A: Well, there’s one more thing that the University changed recently, and people have come up to me and kind of asked me about that. It is the evaluation of scholarship standing. Recently, they switched it from the annual review, the end of May, to now it’s semester by semester. Now, there’s some people that, especially you’re starting in your freshman year, and let’s say you did not really know how the college rigor is going to be, or let’s say you partied too hard or something. The end of the story is, your GPA is really bad. How it used to be is you get your thing evaluated at the end of your first year. Now it’s evaluated the first semester. So you had time to kind of work it back up if you did really well in your spring semester. Now they’re just like “All right, you’re already on probation” or something. I think that we need to change that back to the year by year thing. Or, if we keep it at the semester base, how about we evaluate it, and if you do really good, we will evaluate you for better scholarships. So you can stay at the same one if you’re doing all the good things, like you’re staying in line. But if you go above it, let’s say you’re on President’s List or something, you do way better than what your high school numbers would have showed, we’ll give you more scholarships because you know how to do your things here.
Q: Your campaign hasn’t had a lot of traditional public platforming. What have you done to get your message out?
A: I think my campaign is the most unique one that we’ve had here because it’s not really that pushing messages out, because I don’t really think that the whole button issues, like we’re all going to wear buttons and everything, really does anything. I think that the best way is organic connection with people. So I kind of walk up to people, “Hey, I’m running for president,” and I kind of talk with them a little bit and “What do you want,” and that’s how I got my scholarship point from earlier. Someone brought that up with me. So I’m like, “Wow I didn’t know that.” So I think that if I’m doing it more out in the field, rather than just sitting on my phone like, “Oh yeah, we’re going to post this,” or something, or some feel good message like I’m going to walk in a crosswalk downtown, I think that that would do a lot better job of actually organically connecting with the people.
Q: What’s one last thing you want voters to know about you?A: One last thing I want you all to know is I’d be more than happy to represent you all over the next year, and I’ll be more than happy to fight like hell for anything that you guys need. And I’ll fight harder than anyone has ever fought for you guys, and I won’t just sit and kumbaya the whole year. I’m actually going to be out there. I’ll be fighting the good fight, and I’ll make sure that we’re going to be super happy with how we turn out at the end of next year.
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