Signaling a change in the Student Union leadership, the “Perspective” slate won all three of its races in the elections for next year’s executive council.
“I was really excited that everyone on our slate won,” said Paul Moinester, who won his race for president over Neil Patel. “It was a tribute to how hard we worked.”
Moinester, who currently serves as Speaker of the South 40, attributes his victory to his commitment and promise while campaigning.
“People liked what I had to say,” he said. “They felt excited about those things coming to fruition. They saw how hard I was working and they respected that.”
Joining Moinester will be incoming Treasurer Jason Lewis and Secretary Susan Land, as well as PerSUnal slate Vice Presidential Candidate Bobby Jones.
“We all have extensive experience meeting new people and talking to student groups,” said Lewis, treasurer of the class of 2007, who won a close race over PerSUnal Candidate Aaron Robinson. “We are happy our hard work paid off.”
Land, a senator from the Art School who beat Treasury Representative Jessica Wasserman for the position, sees potential as the incoming secretary in further communicating with the student body.
“For me personally, the position is all about communication,” said Land. “I am excited about heading up the Public Relations committee-not only to have the communication to do things internally, but also with student groups.”
As vice president, Jones also looks forward to fostering more dialogue by bringing different Washington University groups together.
“One of my main goals is to see the Wash. U. campus come closer together as a unified community,” said Jones, a member of the Social Programming Board. “A simple first step is setting up periodic meetings that will allow people from [a variety of] groups to come together and communicate to each other about what is going on in their section of campus.”
Although Jones is the only candidate of his slate to win, he sees no problem in working with the Perspective candidates.
“Clearly, when you go into something like that being part of a team, you want your team to win,” he said. “But from the conversations I had with Paul, Jason and Susan during the campaign, I am excited about the year we will share in office.”
Moinester also looks forward to a productive year, working not only with the incoming executives, but also with the PerSUnal candidates and other leaders on campus.
“It is really important that I transition well and learn what has been done,” said Moinester. “I need to forge relationships with the people I need to work with. I am meeting with people who have a vested interest in making the school more sustainable.”
As for working with his runner-up, Moinester says he hopes Patel contributes to next year’s SU from a solid base of knowledge.
“I am definitely open to any idea of working with him,” said Moinester, who won the race by 200 votes. “He is a talented individual and he has a lot of experience with SU.”
Patel also hopes to keep improving SU by continuing in his role as a Treasury Representative.
“I am going to take a really active role, expanding on what I did before,” said Patel. “I am going to take a leadership role to make SU more accountable.”
Moinester also plans to work on the executive council’s accountability and accessibility, hoping to reach out personally to more individual students.
“A lot of it is not necessarily a plan, but more how you conduct yourself,” said Moinester. “It is being more willing to open yourself up. You need to care about people.”
While the executives may not have many concrete plans, they feel that their ideals and concepts will lead to a successful year.
If you are curious about what sort of vision we are going to have, we have not discussed that in detail yet,” said Jones. “But we all have the best interest of the students and the campus as our number one priority.”
In another aspect of last week’s election, the Women’s Panhellenic Organization (PanHel) and the Interfraternity Council’s (IFC) resolution for block funding was voted down. Had the resolution passed, the Greek student groups would have been able to receive funding for programs several years in advance, thus bypassing the SU funding process.
“In the past we have gotten really sporadic numbers as far as funding goes,” said Katie Kotowski, vice president of finance for PanHel, the umbrella organization for all campus sororities. “We just wanted to plan events. We wanted to make sure we could have the same events every year, and that we got consistent funding.”
Kotowski attributes the resolution’s failure to a lack of information among voters.
“A lot of people do not understand that we get that money whether we go thorough SU or not,” said Kotowski. “We are not asking for more money, we are just asking to get out of SU and all the political stuff. A lot of people do not understand that they are not paying more.”