Brandeis Senate Elections coming soon!

Spring elections are coming soon – next Tuesday, April 15.

Lev Hirschhorn and I are running on an activist platform for Class of 2011 Senators. I strongly encourage everyone here at Innermost Parts to vote for us, if you can. Please check out our website at either my or Lev’s UNET space for more information. Also, join our facebook group and invite all our friends! We need all the help we can get, as this is going to be a close race.

To learn more about our campaign, check the blurb (snatched right from what I wrote for the facebook group) below the fold…

Why you should vote for us…

Lev and Alex are running for Senate because they want to move the Senate away from political bickerings and in-fighting and transform it into the powerful advocate for students and the Brandeis community which it was meant to be.

We are not merely going to bring quarter machines into the washrooms. Simple tasks like this are easy stuff, which any Senator can do and accomplish quickly. What we need are Senators who can do these simple tasks and still tackle the bigger issues, who can make the Student Union less silly and more serious. Lev and Alex are those people.

Our class, the class of 2011, is the class who can begin this trend – who can elect representatives who really push meaningful senate resolutions, who engage and successfully challenge the administration on violations of student rights, who create and advocate projects to express Brandeis’ commitment to social justice.

What kind of projects? Here are a few:

—Student Rights—

Over the past year, the violations of student rights by the Administration have been troubling. Little student input was taken in the decision to arm the campus police. Student money was taken out of student hands without notice or community input. Students have been disciplined without being informed of what their rights are and without following the proper code of procedure.

The Student Union has not done nearly enough to protest this or stop it, and at the current pace, even further violations will probably come. Lev and Alex will take the Senate lead in really holding the Administration accountable for such violations and letting them know we care and we are ready and able to do something about them.

—Investment responsibility—

The Brandeis endowment is nearly $700 million dollars. No one except for a few top-level administrators – neither you nor the Student Union president – can know which companies and funds that money is invested in. There is no public policy on decisions concerning the impact of our investments on society, the environment, and the world at large.

Alex began the campaign InVEST to reform university endowment policy, and Lev is a key member. As Senators, they will push this issue even farther.

—Aramark—

Dining services are a mess. Sanitation in the kitchens where our food is cooked has widely been reported as terrible. Meal plans are impractical, overpriced, and make no sense. Dining halls close too early and in non-peak hours have bland and unappealing food. Workers have complained about mistreatment. Food is rarely local, and the amount of plastic disposed of due to shore of washable containers is shameful. It is very difficult to find healthy options.

Alex and Lev will make dining services reform one of their biggest priorities, and seriously address these issues unitl the food, workplace, and health of our dining halls is vastly improved.

—Environmental Sustainability—

We need to revitalize and make good our University commitment to the environment. We need to bring a cheap and versatile bike-sharing system to campus so that students can get around easily without wasting gas. We need to bring more locally grown food to the dining halls. We need to even further decrease University energy usage. We need to ensure that Brandeis uses recycled and recyclable products in the dining halls and around the campus. Lev and Alex will make this stuff happen.

So there you go… hope I’ve convinced you. If you have any questions, leave a comment or drop me an email. If you want to help, that would be sweetly wonderful.