Student Association Sen. John Bennett, ESIA-U, officially launched a campaign for an undergraduate at-large senate seat Sunday.
He is first person to officially announce his candidacy for one of two seats that represent the entire undergraduate population. As a first-year senator, Bennett said his experience on the finance committee swayed his decision to run for U-At Large.
“What I’ve realized is that all, or nearly all, GW students care about one thing with respect to the SA, and that’s money,” Bennett said. “They are concerned about whether the orgs they are involved with get a fair shot at allocations and co-sponsorship money…I want to be the candidate that focuses on tackling that one central issue, finances, while trying simultaneously to broaden student interest.”
If elected, Bennett said he wants to solicit more student feedback through his Student Organization Outreach Bill that passed in the Senate in October. The bill requires senators to meet with specific assigned organizations throughout the year. Due to the high SA turnover rate ever year, Bennett said that without him in the Senate, the bill would be forgotten.
Bennett said he intends to streamline the financial process for student organizations to insure that student financial concerns are met immediately and appropriately by the SA. By continuing the existing trend of increasing the initial allocations for first-year student organizations, Bennett said he wishes to encourage students to take initiative of starting new groups on campus.
His primary goal, however, is to establish a binding cap on the amount of money the finance committee can allocate during the fall semester.
“This measure would ensure that groups that do most or all of their programming in the spring won’t get left behind when their turn to apply for funding comes around because the finance committee spent beyond its means early in the year,” Bennett said.
He said the Senate has done a poor job in communicating with its constituents in years past and he hopes to keep students better informed, but also wants them to pressure the SA to work toward more legislation.
“It’s easy to condemn the Senate for focusing exclusively on internal issues, but when there’s no organized external pressures to take a different course of action, there’s not a whole lot that can be done on the Senate side of things,” Bennett said.
Bennett is a brother of Beta Theta Pi, a member of both College Republicans and College Democrats, and participated on the Alternative Winter Breaks trip to Honduras.
Candidate registration ends Monday at 12 p.m. Elections will be held on March 9 and 10.
