USG campaign promises left unfulfilled

USG President Jaime Desmond, Vice President John Polk and student leaders look back on the administration's obstacles to campaign goals.

As campaigning starts for this year's Undergraduate Student Government presidential race, each ticket soon will be trumpeting platforms and promises to catch the interest of student voters.

With that in mind, a glance at the platforms of outgoing President Jaime Desmond and Vice President John Polk reveals a list of partially fulfilled promises.

Desmond and Polk celebrated their election victory last April after 1,807 undergraduate students chose to make them the leaders of USG.

Although their first platform challenged the University to re-examine its hiring practices for teachers, that goal shifted to improving feedback from students via the USG Academic Assembly, Desmond said.

"We did some research regarding tenure and realized that that was a roadblock," Desmond said.

"I would say that to the extent that we were successful, Jaime and John were successful," Girod said, adding that this was a rebuilding year for the assembly.

Another goal Desmond and Polk included on their campaign platform was a minimum circulation time of textbooks to increase the number of used books and lower prices. The focus of this goal has changed, too.

"Trying to reduce the price of textbooks was a giant task that would take years," said Polk, who sits on the Penn State Bookstore advisory board.

Instead, Polk said he helped improve the letter to University instructors encouraging them to file their textbook lists earlier.

Of their four main initiatives, Desmond and Polk made significant progress only in their work with the bookstore, said James Hornick, USG Centre Halls Senator.

Josh Smith, senate president, said Polk's work with the bookstore went well, but didn't fulfill the goal set in the campaign.

Desmond and Polk's third platform promise was to involve more students in the decisions of the borough council.

To that end, USG continues to communicate with council member Elizabeth Goreham, the candidate USG endorsed in the local election this fall, Desmond said.

But despite USG's voter registration drive this fall, student voter turnout was still too low, Desmond said, partly because many students registered in their hometowns instead of State College.

"I don't think that there's anything major we can do other than continue to push the registration drives," Desmond said.

"That's an example of one of those things that takes longer than a year to accomplish," Polk said, adding that they didn't realize it was such a complicated issue when they campaigned.

The administration left the issue of food prices largely untouched, Smith said.

Although the USG executive branch did not cause any sweeping changes during the past year, it has improved interaction with other student groups, cosponsored several multicultural events and continued to offer services to students like bus tickets, Desmond said.

Platforms are best used as a way to show students that the candidates have identified problems and set goals, said Adam Black, Pollock/Nittany Halls senator.

Although Desmond and Polk have not fulfilled all of their platforms, Black said, they have still done a good job.

Polk said one of their biggest accomplishments was striking a deal with the Centre Daily Times to develop a World Wide Web site offering student-oriented services in the future.

Both Desmond and Polk said they plan to graduate from the University in December, and will stay active in USG in the Fall Semester.