As I've spent this past week campaigning, going to events and meeting students, I've heard again and again that they feel that the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate can't do much of anything. While the TCU Senate can't control tuition bills or build new dorms, it can, and should, be active in improving student life. As a senator for the past two years, that's what I've been doing, and I'm the only candidate who has done something to fix the issues which students care about most: expanding wireless in West and Haskell, improving West, Metcalf and Carmichael common rooms and making Tufts safer. As TCU president, I would continue to put students first by making realistic and tangible progress in the areas that matter most to them.
While I am the only candidate who voted against the Trips Cabin, I don't know if I've made it clear enough exactly why I voted this way. I always thought the recovered funds had the potential to revolutionize life at Tufts. That's why Brandon Rattiner and I originally both supported a proposal to use the recovered funds in their entirety as a gift challenge for a new campus center — because it would revolutionize student life. As the economy collapsed and it soon became clear that Tufts would not be building a new campus center any time soon, I changed my priorities to reflect the new reality and began to look for other ways we could make a similar impact.
Taken in this light, expanding the Loj really won't revolutionize life at Tufts. It might allow a few more groups to go on retreats each year, but the simple fact is that an off-campus retreat center already exists. What does have the potential to revolutionize life at Tufts is the Senate's recent decision to eliminate most on-campus ticket costs. This project has the potential to foster a more cohesive community by allowing students to go out and support their friends and experience more of what Tufts has to offer without having to worry about spending $10 or $15 a weekend when increasingly, every dollar makes a big difference. Unfortunately, there are many questions about how long this experiment will be able to last, and $230,000 could have gone a long way toward making the elimination of ticket costs more sustainable. Quite simply, putting students first means putting all students first.
I think it's important to highlight these differences among the candidates. Elections are about choices, and as voters, you deserve to know the facts. You deserve to know what makes us unique, you deserve specifics over buzzwords and you deserve transparency over secretiveness. That's what I've been doing on this campaign, and it's how I hope to act as president. Throughout this campaign, I've listened to students, answered their e-mails and taken their suggestions. Many of these suggestions have ended up in my platform. I'm not foolish enough to think that I can do this job alone — the help of the student body is my greatest asset.
Election Day is today. By the time you read this, some of you may have already voted, and I applaud that. We pride ourselves on active citizenship and political awareness, and voting, even in a TCU election, is the hallmark of both of those tenets. Whether you support me or not is secondary to voting. Please vote. Please take the time to think about the candidates, read their platforms and make a decision based on substance. You deserve a TCU president that puts students first, but in order for that to happen, you have to make your voices heard.
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Chas Morrison is a sophomore majoring in International Relations. He is a candidate for the TCU presidency.
