Hey everyone! Our names are Elijah and Aliza and we are running for President and Vice President of the Students’ Association. Elijah is a sophomore, who currently serves as the Vice President and works in this role to lead SA and has been involved with advocacy efforts relating to all facets of the student experience. Aliza is a first-year, currently serving as a Legislative Advisor on the DEI Committee of the Students’ Association, working to provide equitable platforms and increase diverse student representation at the university.
With our combined experience across different areas of advocacy on campus and our proven track record of accomplishments for the student body—we’re ready to hit the ground running. We are committed to addressing the hard-hitting issues and building students into the changing administrative structure starting on day one. With changes such as a brand new VP for Student Life, new directors of UHS and DPS starting over the summer, and a Dining Services contract changing next spring, we’re committed to being fierce advocates for students to be collaborators in the changes that impact us most.
Our collective university experiences should be crafted with students’ best interests in mind, so we’ll continue to ensure that students are directly heard by administration. Our work will also focus on pushing for DEI in all spaces by working with centers like UHS, UCC, OEI, and OMSA—through having intentional conversations with students of all backgrounds, facilitating the process for students to receive accommodations, enhancing accessibility services, providing resources for underrepresented student groups, and more.
Every year, the University of Rochester highlights one “Meliora Value” to showcase—it just happens that next year is all about highlighting “Accountability.” We pledge to center our term on this crucial value, and to hold administrators accountable next year in all aspects—whether it be ensuring student collaboration in developing future dining services, meeting with the new DPS Chief biweekly, or pushing out student-made DEI training to academic departments for faculty education. However, accountability also applies to us. We aim to bolster our communications to be more informative, require elected officials in SA to be engaged in student organization events, and better utilize our petitioning site.
With accountability comes transparency, another value we will uphold to better the student experience. We deserve to have a say in and be aware of matters that directly concern us. From improving university-wide communication systems, to streamlining the bias-related incident reporting process, transparency should take place at all levels.
The Students’ Association is by students, for students, and advocates for the student body’s concerns—it’s critical for us to be accountable and transparent to best do our jobs and to communicate our advocacy efforts with those around us. In our term, we hope to not only cultivate a space for open discussion but to be an incubator for urgent and lasting change for all students. Keep up with our campaign and feel free to message us with any thoughts, questions, or concerns @elijah.bader, @alizaslopez, and @vote4elijah.aliza on Instagram!