Vote for Feasibility
Both presidential candidates—Audrey Vanderslice and Ayush Noori—promise to enact positive change, to promote diversity and represent all students. But only Vanderslice’s platform has a possibility of success in action, and can be feasibly executed.
Vanderslice’s campaign focuses on four tenets: 1) mental health, 2) better communication with the student body, and 3) greater student input in administrative decisions. While these ideas may seem generic, the power in the Vanderslice campaign lies in the tangible extensions of these principles.
Mental health, an issue regurgitated in this year’s election, is broad and difficult to address concisely. Unlike her opponent, however, Vanderslice offers a proposal that is both effective and feasible—an accessible, 15 minute walk-in counseling session, which has been backed up by health counselors as realistic goals. This program would offer an entry-level opportunity for students to discuss problems and experience counseling services for the first time, or to take a quick break from the rapid pace of Exeter. The intimidating nature of beginning counseling is well-recognized across campus, and Vanderslice is the candidate that presents a realistic solution.
Student Council often feels inaccessible for many Exonians, despite its purpose to be a representative body. Communication from both sides is often limited to the channels of class representatives and dorm representatives. Vanderslice has experience addressing this issue as point person on the Executive Board for the Committee on Community, Equity and Diversity (CCED). She will steer Student Council in a direction that makes current resources available to students and expand CCED’s agenda to accommodate on-campus student affinity groups. Vanderslice recognizes that Student Council’s agenda is often misguided due to ineffective communication, despite good intentions of supporting student groups.
Student Council has much to do in the next few years; from Evening Prayer to lower/upper health classes, the next Executive Board needs to respond to the administrative decisions that define Exeter. Currently, the only mode of sustained, direct communication between students and deans is Dean’s Council, who are often cryptic with the student body. Vanderslice proposes the publication of minutes not only from Deans’ Council meetings, but also for other student bodies that work with administration in policy development. The Health Department has been developing lower/upper health classes for eight years with no student input. There is a clear problem, and Vanderslice is the candidate that can solve it.
Noori presents respectable and impactful ideas as well, but I have doubt in their feasibility. While the OneCard and Bike Share programs seek to establish financial equity, they are completed proposals that have already elapsed Student Council’s oversight, and are now in the hands of the administration. Essentially, these are recycled programs that the new Executive Board will not actually engage with. Executive Board has already met with Caroline Hooper of the Finance Office to discuss the OneCard proposal and has handed it off to financial administration to manage, and the Bike Share program will be managed only by the Student Life Committee. These programs only reflect the Executive Board’s past oversight.
Noori’s posters also suggest the idea of a “social stipend”: an additional fund that will curtail any palpable financial disparities between friends during recreational activity. However, the feasibility of another stipend in addition to the current textbook fund is questionable. The $900 fund already allotted to students for academic supplies could not be expanded upon, and to implement the social stipend anyways would force a dangerous decision between academics and social life. In addition, I doubt it is within the realm of Student Council to find funding for such a program. Student Council is completely unaffiliated with how the school manages endowment and finances, especially in a program that would require such significant rebudgeting.
It is evident that Vanderslice is the candidate with tangible, realistic solutions.