View a slideshow of the candidates.
Brian Bidadi
According to Undergraduate Council of Students presidential candidate Brian Bidadi '06, his three years of experience on UCS - he started out his first semester at Brown as an associate member, has served as secretary and currently serves as Admissions and Student Services Committee chair - have provided him with "knowledge about how UCS works and how it should work ideally."
Bidadi's platform focuses on building community and increasing contact between UCS and students so the council can effectively represent students' needs. He wants to "institutionalize" programs such as student body polling and regular - not just during election-time - dorm rounds by UCS members. He will increase UCS collaboration on class events, which "create bonds between students," he said, by helping to publicize the events and encouraging representatives to attend the events themselves. Bidadi said he believes these initiatives will increase face-to-face interaction between UCS and the student body and give students a presence in the process of student government.
If elected, Bidadi said he would increase UCS cooperation with the Residen-tial Council to create regional card access, giving students access to neighboring dorms. Additional-ly, he hopes to make the housing lottery less divisive by creating a committee to investigate ways to reorganize the process. Alongside larger, more expensive changes, he said he has smaller-scale suggestions, such as posting photographs online of a typical room in each dorm, which will make the process less problematic for students.
Above all, it is his three years of perspective, combined with his "open mind," which Bidadi said gives him an edge. These qualities, he said, allow him to "contextualize" the issues - to "see how problems were addressed in the past, see what solutions worked and what didn't ... and be willing to rectify past mistakes."
Ben Creo
In high school, Ben Creo '07 "was always the kind of guy who would rip up their ballot in protest" of what he called a "puppet government." During his first year at Brown, Creo did not serve on the Undergraduate Council of Students because he said he "needed to know Brown more and understand it better before trying to change it." Now, as Campus Life Committee chair and a candidate for UCS president, Creo said he is ready to really make change.
In order to mend the University's advising program, which he described as "pretty broken and insufficient for most people," Creo proposes hiring full-time general academic advisors who would be unaffiliated with specific departments and whose sole job would be advising and staying in-formed of academic activity on campus.
In terms of student services, Creo is focusing on the lack of free and confidential STD testing at Brown. Currently, depending on an individual's insurance policy, tests can cost up to $200 and there is no guarantee that parents will not be informed of the tests on their insurance bill. Creo said it would cost about $60,000 per year for the University to implement free STD testing, a sum which he called "not actually that much" in view of the entire budget.
Additionally, Creo proposes to increase campus-wide communication by creating a "BrownTicker" - an Internet program displaying University events, announcements and deadlines, which would run along the bottom of existing Web sites. Combined with announcement screens that will appear in the Ratty next year thanks to his efforts, Creo said the ticker will make communication more efficient and will "create a vibe of, 'Wow, there's always something exciting going on around Brown.' "
Swathi Bojedla
Swathi Bojedla '07 was first inspired to run in 2004 for a representative position on the Undergraduate Finance Board because of the terrible experience she had her first year at Brown when she presented to the board as a student group leader requesting funding. "It was the scariest thing I've ever done," she said. Now, as she runs for the position of UFB chair, she wants students to realize that "the money UFB is allocating is not ours, it's the student body's ... and it's not my place to treat you as if you're inferior."
Bojedla proposes making all UFB financial records open and available to the public in order to increase the Board's accountability and force it to "make consistent decisions, to set and follow precedents," she said. Additionally, she wants to publish UFB's code of operations in order to convey to students more clearly what they need to do to receive funding.
Bojedla does not currently promote the opening up of UFB's deliberation process, though she is strongly in favor of publishing detailed minutes after UFB meetings, because "everyone should know why decisions were made without having to know who said what."
She said opening up the deliberations would only make them more political. "In an ideal world, they would be open, and everyone would make a decision that was fair and unbiased," she said, but she explained that it would be impossible when "the group whose fate you're deciding is sitting right in front of you."
Richard Soto
Richard Soto '06 said he wants the only complaint students have with the Undergraduate Finance Board to be its limited resources. Right now, he said, students' concerns are primarily with the "closed" process. If elected to the position of UFB Chair, Soto hopes to open up UFB deliberations - the time when the Board decides how to allocate its funds - to the public so that students will "have an idea of how we make our decisions ... so they can see why a proposal gets rejected or approved," he said.
Soto said giving the public a peek into the rationale behind UFB decisions will allow student groups to be better prepared when giving presentations to the Board. "It gives smaller groups and groups that don't normally get a lot of funding a shot," he said. Opening up deliberations, which would require an amendment to the UFB constitution, will require a two-thirds majority vote of UFB for the change.
Soto wants to increase education of both leaders of student groups and UFB representatives about the complex process behind UFB decisions. He proposes to take the annual orientation for representatives "to the next level." In addition to a day devoted to explaining rules and codes, he proposes adding a day of looking at case studies, which will allow rookie representatives to learn from past UFB decisions. He also hopes to create an optional orientation for student leaders, which he said will "give people a basis to work with" when asking UFB for money.
