Thursday, April 15, 2010

Incoming SA President Lifton Previews Presidency

In an email interview with WRGW News, incoming SA President Jason Lifton described his priorities for the coming year and gave his opinion on a wide range of issues concerning GW students.

“We plan on working on a number of different student life and academic issues next year,” he said. “We want to focus on fixing the student organization financial process. We are going to work with Student Judicial Services to ensure that students are being properly treated when they are in violation of the student code of conduct. We also want to work on making the SA more of a resource for organizations, helping them save money and pool resources.”

Lifton said that Gelman Library needs a “technological facelift,” citing a dearth of outlets, projectors, and multimedia study rooms in the school’s largest library.

“The library needs help. I don’t anticipate this being a one-year solution, but my goal is to set the library up to be better sponsored,” he said. “They have great plans for modernization, but without the funding to do it, it will never happen.”

Get Gelman Going, a Facebook group created by students concerned with the slow pace of Gelman’s much-needed improvements, has already accumulated over 1,200 members.

Another issue on students’ minds is J Street. From limited dining options to expensive weighing stations, many students have expressed disappointment with the current state of the closest thing GW has to a dining hall.

Lifton said contracts with Sodexo make it difficult to work on J Street, but he has looked at George Mason University’s dining hall, also run by Sodexo, as a model for the ideal J Street.

“George Mason has an interesting setup that they use for dining where they have different small venues with different options. It’s not like our food court setup; it’s more of different smaller stations,” he said. “I hope that we can use that as an example to improve how J Street Works.”

Lifton also discussed methods for improving campus security, addressing inefficiencies in 4-Ride and general safety concerns around campus.

“I think that the simple solution for long wait time is more 4-Ride vans,” Lifton said in response to many students who have reported waiting upwards of 45 minutes for a 4-Ride van to pick them up. “That said, I’m not sure about the feasibility of that immediately.”

“There are a lot of things that can be done to protect students, from security in residence halls to officers on the streets,” he said. “I think that we need to make sure that UD is doing everything to educate our students about safety on campus and doing everything to protect those students.”

Lifton cautioned students not to expect big changes immediately.

“There are many smaller things that we can work on, such as the financial process and improving SA resources, but something like the library or new dining options aren’t things that we can fix in one year,” he said. “I want to finish my term as president having advocated for the issues that are big ticket items that will drastically change students’ experience at GW.”

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