Election season is often rife with promises from elected candidates on all they plan to achieve during their time in office — if they are elected. Yet, when the time comes to carry through on these promises, a lot is left on the table. So this issue of Forum focuses on the three main elected bodies on campus — Student Government, the Senate of College Councils and the Graduate Student Assembly — highlighting what each of these three groups has done for students on campus thus far. SG President Kori Rady wrote on behalf of SG. Senate President Geetika Jerath wrote on behalf of Senate. And GSA President Brian Wilkey — who assumed the presidency at the beginning of the semester when former president David Villarreal stepped down — wrote on behalf of GSA.  

As a refresher, some of the platform points the Rady-Strickland team campaigned on included extending Thanksgiving break, extending facility hours at places like Belo and the Union, expanding URide — a program that gets university students home from the downtown entertainment district after midnight — lighting the Tower for academics and forgiving first-time parking tickets. Some of the platform points Jareth campaigned on, in an election internal to Senate, included expanding interdisciplinary opportunities, strengthening the involvement of organizations through the Invest in Texas campaign, analyzing budget priorities and publishing online voting records. Some of the points the Villarreal-Wilkey team campaigned on included improving graduate student housing options, increasing participation in the GSA, a push to improve graduate student health services and professionalizing GSA’s procedures.

For more information on campaign platforms visit http://radystrickland.com or click here to see the online version of Jerath’s campaign.

Malik is a business honors, finance, and Plan II junior from Austin, Texas.