In the past few years I’ve written to the News fairly often, but this is perhaps most important letter I’ll ever write, as it pertains to events that will affect you far beyond my remaining year at Northeastern.
I am writing not as a junior, an off-campus student, an SGA executive board member, or as a fraternity man, but as a student representative who has endured storm and strife to make Northeastern better place. I am writing in support of the presidential candidacy of Vice President for Academic Affairs Amanda Sabia.
It is often said that “management is doing things right,” while leadership is “doing the right things.” In my year as a member of Ryan Fox’s SGA executive board, I have seen Ryan prove himself an adept manager. However, I have also seen him blow many big decisions that affected thousands of students.
As the College of Criminal Justice staggered on its last legs, Vice President Amanda Sabia urged Ryan to support the CJ College with a resolution of the Student Senate, through grassroots means, with everything at our disposal. President Fox stifled her efforts, effectively blocking a resolution from coming to the floor of the Student Senate, allowing the CJ College to die without a whisper of formal protest from the student body.
As our campus was consumed with Fight for Five, Amanda sought to bring the Provost to an open forum hosted by SGA, to get the concerns of 6,000 students addressed by the man whose decisions they were concerned about. However, Ryan’s machinations led to a calamitous scattering of forums by-college, often during co-op hours, without the Provost ever being brought into contact with the student body.
These are two of Ryan’s half dozen major decisions that were not in the interest of the average student, but were simply the easy and expeditious thing to at the time. And this is to say nothing of Ryan’s ‘my way or the highway’ personnel management style or his autocratic methods of chairing the Student Senate, which has alienated many who merely wish for their concerns to be heard.
Much of Ryan’s platform of “getting results” is based on the Budget Priorities Process, in which the SGA executive board surveys the student body on improvements we would like to see to campus, taking what input we receive and presenting it to the Administration. The administration chooses, of the survey’s priorities, what it will fund. The Budget Priorities Process is the work of two powerful executive boards (SGA and GPSA), not ONE overly ambitious individual, as much as Ryan claims he is the one “getting results”.
In short, Ryan’s platform is a “student services” platform. Aside from a student trustee, which has been a priority of SGA for decades, the Fox platform contains few new ideas. It is based on the little ideas Ryan has always advocated: providing more channels on your television and more sauces in your dining hall. In short, Northeastern wiping your behind for you. I think that Student Government should be more than sauce and digital cable. What use is sauce when you sacrifice colleges? Who cares what’s on television when your primary ‘student leader’ won’t listen to 6000 students? SGA should empower you, SGA should fight for you, SGA should be a hell of a lot more than it is doing right now.
Please choose a different path for the Student Government, which is YOUR Student Government, and support the candidacy of Amanda Sabia. Voting is open now on myNEU.
–Derek Miller is Student Government Association Vice President of Student Affairs.
