Going by what his mom says, Gavin Keirans is right on track.
"He's always had a plan," Mary Keirans said of the current University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) president. "He was always well thought out."
When he was a kid, he planned to go to law school and get into Philadelphia politics. That long-term plan still stands, but for now, Keirans has a big year ahead of him.
He hopes to avoid the squabbling that marked the turbulent end of the now-defunct Undergraduate Student Government and stabilize UPUA, which underwent significant reformation during the past two years. Instead, Keirans is hoping to get back to the real jobs of student government: advocacy and improving student life.
"I think we're going to hit some home runs this year," Keirans said regarding his major goals after last week's Association of Big Ten Students conference held at Penn State.
Those plans include the well-publicized tenant-landlord dispute center, an online book swap in partnership with Information Technology Services and a rejuvenated legal services program in a cooperation with the Dickinson School of Law. Additionally, Keirans is interested in strengthening UPUA's presence on campus.
"The problem is not that there's not people that want to be involved -- the idea of apathy. There's a lot of people involved in a lot of different groups, and there's no central voice," Keirans said.
Keirans sees the campus-wide distribution of responsibility as "diluted," and said UPUA really needed "to bring back the collective ideal of the student body."
"The UPUA is supposed to be the voice, but we don't control the money," he said. "And [University Park Allocation Committee] UPAC controls the money, but they don't do programming. ... All of these used to fall under the umbrella of student government."
To accomplish his many goals, Keirans gets his days started around 9 in the morning, balancing breakfast with his first duty of the day: replying to all of the 50 e-mails he gets daily, which can take up to two hours.
After lunch in his office at the HUB-Robeson Center -- probably a salad or a wrap -- it's off to class. Keirans is a business administration major, but he'll be adding a second major in labor and industrial relations this semester. The time commitment for his UPUA position sometimes conflicts with schoolwork, and Keirans admitted classes are "sometimes a struggle."
Classes are generally followed by about 10 hours of UPUA work, spread between office time and meetings with students and administrators. Somewhere in that time period, Keirans might fit in his go-to Stouffer's chicken carbonara for dinner.
Friday, however, because he had no classes, Keirans held meetings with Kendra Carr, UPAC overall chairwoman, and Student Assembly Chairman Ralph Crivello.
In his conversation with Carr, Keirans discussed increasing cooperation with the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments and the Graduate Student Association (GSA), which could help secure funding. GSA President Alfonso Mendoza stopped by afterward to see how the meeting had gone and concurred cooperation for funding would be beneficial.
The meeting with Crivello covered a wide-range of items on the UPUA agenda this year -- especially appointed positions and Crivello's pet project, the book swap.
Keirans' own pet project, the tenant-landlord dispute center, is the most publicized aspect of his agenda. He campaigned on the idea in March after adapting it from Elizabeth Goreham, State College Borough Council president.
"Actually, Liz Goreham campaigned on that idea in 1999, but it's been almost 10 years, and nothing had come of it," Keirans said. "It was a great idea that I had seen, and I really wanted to push it forward and make it a reality -- to take it from an empty campaign promise to something that could really be beneficial for students as a whole."
At the same time, Keirans is planning a revised legal services program for students, a bulked-up initiative that will offer more extensive aid ranging from simple advice to possible representation.
New Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims' experience at the University of Indiana should be a major factor in the development of the new legal program, Keirans said. Indiana University operates "one of the most extensive legal support systems in the country," and Sims is expected to weigh in, Keirans added.
"We're on step one as far as setting up the legal adviser system here, the reason being we just overhauled Student Affairs with a new VP," Keirans said. "Some of the know-how that Sims has and obviously the great law school we have here will help to make this a reality."
Once Keirans can wrap up his meetings for the day, he returns to the downtown house he shares with several of his friends from St. Joseph's Preparatory School in Philadelphia. He'll usually allow himself some downtime before going to bed around 4 a.m. Though he has a lot on his plate, Mary Keirans thinks her son can handle it.
"All of us have enjoyed watching Gavin achieve what he's wanted to achieve," she said. "We know that there's more to come."
