Candidates for UCS president
Michael Glassman '09
With Banner creating an uproar across campus, Michael Glassman '09 understands why the "implementation process" is not going smoothly.
"You can't impose a lot of rules on Brown students," he says. "You have to let them make those choices for themselves."
Glassman, currently the UCS communications chair, wants the council to develop an appropriate response to Banner. But he has also set goals of renovating dorms, expanding January@Brown and increasing the number of students on UCS by reaching out to those who show interest in participating but are discouraged when they lose an election.
"I want to personally approach them and make an effort to get those people into UCS," he says.
A New York City native who plans to double-concentrate in the sciences and the humanities - he hasn't yet decided which ones - Glassman worked to create the Flex meal plans last year as a member of the campus life and admissions and student services committees.
Glassman is also involved with the Sustainable Food Initiative, the goal of which, he said, "is to get students who don't know anything - who are basically like me and are from New York City and don't know anything about agriculture - to come volunteer on the farm."
Eric Mukherjee '09
Eric Mukherjee '09, the only candidate for president who does not serve on UCS or go to its meetings, would prefer not to start.
Mukherjee is running on a platform of "abolishing" the council, which he sees as bureaucratic and ineffective. If elected, he says, he would instead "open a forum for creating a student government with actual credibility." Once that process is underway, he would probably resign.
Is it possible?
"Anything's possible," says the biochemistry concentrator from Topeka, Kan.
Mukherjee insists that his platform is not a joke - though it may have started out that way - and says the students will support him.
"From the people that I've talked to, they're very enthusiastic about my position," he says. "I'm running because I see a broken system," he added, "and I think I can fix it."
Mukherjee's other interests include playing computer games and participating on Brown's Quiz Bowl team.
Moses Riner '08
Though he transferred from Duke University last fall, Moses Riner '08 thinks he's gotten in touch with his new school.
A member of the rugby team and an at-large UCS representative since the beginning of the spring semester, Riner says going door-to-door in dorms and talking to students has helped him "understand what Brown students want."
"You might think that a lot of people would just blow you off," he says. "But actually, I got a lot of positive feedback."
A history concentrator with a strong interest in entrepreneurship, Riner's major issues include creating more social space on campus and developing a response to Banner that protects the open curriculum.
"I live in New Dorm right now, and there's absolutely no common rooms in there," Riner said.
Riner, who is from Louisville, Ky., and is the youngest of six children, also wants to create a rewards system that would give students points for attending athletic events. These points would then be redeemable for Brown memorabilia.
In addition to the rugby team and UCS, Riner is also involved in the Brown Investment Group.
Stefan Smith '09
Stefan Smith '09, an at-large representative on UCS, wants to make sure Brown students don't forget the world that exists around them.
Smith, a history concentrator, tutors at a juvenile training center in Cranston to help people earn their GEDs and is a crisis-line operator for suicide counseling and rape intervention at his home in Greenville, S.C. But he worries that Brown students are often "complacent" about the outside community, especially about education.
"We take so much for granted at Brown, in terms of intellectual freedom," he says.
Smith favors mandatory community service for UCS members, and he advocates that the University freeze student tuition. He says tuition, which has been rising faster than inflation, should be kept "at the status quo so that the gap between who can come and who can't doesn't spread."
Smith also wants to open the proceedings of the Undergraduate Financial Board to the public record, arguing that students have a right to know how their money is being spent.
"UFB Chicken Littles will tell you that the sky will fall down if we open meetings," he says. "That's not true."
Candidates for UCS vice president
Jake Heimark '10
A freshman taking all of his classes S/NC because "grades can sometimes provide the wrong incentives for students," Jake Heimark '10 wants to have younger leadership at the top of UCS.
"I think the problem with UCS is the current leadership focuses too much on their own agendas," he says. "I think it's time that, with a younger person as vice president, they can help the younger members achieve their goals."
Heimark, a Palo Alto, Calif., native, is the UCS Webmaster and is leading an initiative to consider outsourcing Brown's e-mail service to Google's Gmail.
Heimark also calls the current state of technology at Brown "embarrassing" and says students deserve a three-year plan from the administration that includes a plan for wireless Internet, universal card access and "an online registration system that's actually usable."
Because Brown is "a unique university," he says, "we need to change Banner for Brown."
Heimark is also involved with Free the Children, an organization that focuses on building schools and advocating against child labor, among other things. He has been to Kenya five times and has also been to Nicaragua and Mexico.
Lauren Kolodny '08
Lauren Kolodny '08, an international relations concentrator from San Diego, says there is too much bureaucracy in UCS and that individuals often get left behind in the paperwork.
"The reason I really want to run for vice president," she says, "is I think there needs to be more oversight of each individual member of UCS." New members sometimes get lost, she says, and are expected to know too much as soon as they arrive.
Kolodny - who transferred to Brown from the University of California, Los Angeles, the fall of her sophomore year - says she wanted "a more open and progressive institution" and that the threat to shopping period represented by Banner "really undermines the open curriculum."
Kolodny, who is UCS's Corporation liaison, says she has many important connections in the administration, which she wants to use to try to lessen course caps and prerequisites and to print copies of the Course Announcement Bulletin.
She also pushed the Corporation to create a social choice fund, which it finally approved at its meeting this February after declining to act on it on more than one occasion. The new choice offers donors to the University the option of earmarking their money for a separately held fund that invests specifically in companies with good environmental practices.
Other than UCS, Kolodny is involved with the Darfur Action Network. She says she is focusing on trying to bring biogas stoves to a refugee camp so that women and children are not forced to leave the camp to collect firewood and are not exposed to rape and attack.
