A+H Plans for Harris: Transparent and Accountable Student Government
The Coffey-Weller plan for Transparency and Accountability is a pledge to our Harris peers: it will never be easier, nor more comfortable for you to start engagement and stay engaged with Harris Student Government.
We don’t take this commitment lightly. We believe that our transparency will require honesty, dedication, flexibility, and perhaps most of all patience. We believe that representation requires action: a personal willingness to reach out into the community for ideas, and a humility to listen to Harris peers who may disagree with our actions, should that arise. We believe that to be transparent, we have to follow an action-plan. And we have one.
Firstly, we pledge to initiate dialogue with Harristas. Before coursework starts, we plan to conduct open-ended polls for Harris students to fill out. To incentivize poll taking, Harris Student Government will authorize a lottery to ensure high participation so that we can receive a mandate of action from our Student Body. Conducting polling is our means of gauging the key issues for the student body: we will be able to work quicker once this poll is complete.
The next step in our commitment to transparency is ease of personal contact, and our presence. Our slate pledges to hold monthly Town Hall meetings, in which students of all programs and all years can gather to pose questions or concerns. It’s our hope that our Town Hall meetings will serve as a moment of unity for Harris Students: constituents can feel as though their concerns are not isolated. Concurrently, we seek to have weekly Office Hours to express concerns. Office Hours will be conducted by Aidan and Heather at separate times at the Keller Center: peers can come to chat about Student Government or pose concerns by taking a seat next to us. The Coffey-Weller Office Hours will allow students who may feel less comfortable sharing ideas in a public setting to get to know us personally: particularly if Town Hall meetings are held at an inconvenient time. We expect one of our candidates will host a 2 hour office hour in the afternoon, and the other in the evening in the Keller Center. Through these pleasant Office Hours, we hope students can feel a sense of their own power within the Harris Community.
A critical third pillar in our efforts for transparency is the use of social media engagement. In order for us to regularly convey developments with HSG, students should have an already accessible outlet for keeping up with HSG Affairs. We would look to use the Harris Student Government Facebook page far more frequently than 4 times per year, as the current Co-Presidents have. We would post notes and projects that occur after each meeting, and provide outlets for Harristas to get more involved at Harris. We would also seek out the Social Media preference of Harris Students: if there is a particular app students are interested in communication through, we will gladly use this.
Our goal in running for HSG Co-Presidents is to “get this right”: to serve as Co-Presidents that are passionate and active in representing Harris students. We believe that transparency must be at the heart of this movement, and continue to remain open to suggestions to how we could better serve this great student community.