Rochester Institute of Technology - Techmila / Ramikin Yearbook (Rochester, NY)

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Greg Evans and Jack Campbell began their administration during the height of student apathy Their own election took place in Student Sen- ate because fewer than 30% of the student body failed to turn out at the polls on election day. Following the chaos and frustra- tions of the Paul Smith administra- tion Greg and Jack brought a new respect to the Student Association. Their overall policy exhibiting a restrained student power, brought interest to many students. During their administration student gov- ernment aquired a solidarity and involvement never before achieved. Evans was graduated from the Col- lege of Fine and Applied Arts this spring, recieving his Bachelors de- gree in design. His future plans in- clude graduate work at Albany State Campbell, a fouth year Chemistry major, has a year left before earning his Bachelor of Science degree. Next year he will be actively in- volved in Student Court as its new chairman. Greg and Jack laid the foundation for progressive student government. They brought the most important facet, the student, into an interested working force. All and all, due to the efforts of this team, RIT's real symbol —APATHY—has had a setback and hopefully the future will contain its final defeat. A special interview, conducted by TECHMILA's Associate Editor Greg Lewis, took place after Evans and Campbell left office. It is now pre- sented here in its edited form.

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TECHMILA: What were some of the problems that you faced at the be- ginning of your term as President of the RITStudent Association? EVANS: The biggest problem was fol- lowing Paul Smith. Most people thought student government last year at RIT, was lack of government —period. That it would no longer exist because it had reached such a low level of student respect and had accomplished very little. The hardest thing I had to do was to build student respect for student govern- ment and coordinate the relation- ship of the organizations to student government. I spent most of my whole first quarter establishing pub- lic relations for student government, and little on legislation. TECHMILA; What sort of problems arise from a new senate? CAMPBELL: I think the biggest prob- lem is carry-over. 90% of the Sena- tors have had no experience before in student government, other than high school. Those that do come back are usually one-year Senators. There is very little carry-over from two and three-year Senators. The new Senators do not know what is going on. The big problem during spring quarter is the budget and they have never worked with one before: they think in terms of 35, 45 or 50 dollars. Most students do. When the Student Association considers its budget, it is over one hundred thou- sand dollars. TECHMILA: The first order of busi- ness each year is the budget. Do you feel that a new administration—both the President's Cabinet and the Senate—has the ability to review budgets of organizations that they probably are not very familiar with? EVANS: They more or less have to be taught how to handle a large budget, as Jack mentioned. They have never controlled this much money before. Each administration has a different philosophy about how it is going to handle its budget. Our's was differ- ent from Joel Pollack and Tom Dougherty's. Each student pays $25 and the only obligation we have is to carry-over $10,000 per year for the next administration. What we did was to spend the remainder of the money on the students who had paid that year. In the Pollack-Dough- erty administration, the philosophy is to cut all the budgets and keep them as low as possible. I can't agree with this idea because we are not a money making organization. The students are paying the money and it should be spent on them. This was the first year that one administration obligated the next three. We gave $21,000 to the barn project: $7,000 for the next three years. Then there is the Martin Luther King Memorial Scholarship which is $3,000 each year; and the IBM machine for the REPORTER will cost approximately $8,000 for three years. TECHMILA: Do you forsee a raise in the Student Association fee? EVANS: 1 expect a resolution next year for a raise in the fee to take effect in two years. TECHMILA: Could you estimate the amount of the raise? This was the first year that one administration obligated the next three. EVANS: Probably five dollars, which would bring the total fee to $30, The way things are now, the budgets are too tight. The organiza- tions can't request the money that is necessary. As student enrollment rises, more organizations and funds are going to be necessary. TECHMILA: What happened to De- cern Jani this year? EVANS: Decem lani died this year because of lack of carry-over. There was only one member who had two years of experience on it, and that was me. Otherwise Decern Jani was all new members. I could not attend the meetings because of my obliga- tion to student government and con- sequently they did very little this year. TECHMILA: How does RIT compare with other colleges in terms of stu- dent involvement? EVANS: We have an apathetic stu- dent body, but they all are, RiT stu- dents don't know much about the student power movement. I know they don't. When I wrote an article this winter about the Students for a Democratic Society, I found to my surprise that very few people on this campus knew what the SDS was. If the students had read any national magazine or any newspaper they would find an article on SDS activi- ties. It only goes to show the lack of general knowledge that these students have concerning anything going on outside the little world of RIT. TECHMILA: What about the appear- ance of the SDS at RIT this year? Does it have the potential of be- coming a strong force here? EVANS: I think the answer is no. They started out well, with backing from the U of R and the Brockport SDS chapters that had wanted to start an RIT group for the past two years. They got it going, but it fell through, At the first meeting there were about fifty people; half of them were people 1 had invited from the student government. And I would say we out debated them right there about their objectives. When I asked them what their objectives were as an SDS chapter, they said, We have no objectives. There they held back, and that's why the RIT chapter failed. TECHMILA: It was noted in the RE- PORTER they did come up with some objectives. One of them was nullification of the women's resi- dence halls curfew regulations. EVANS: By that point most of the SDS's objectives had already been decided, only they weren't aware of it. TECHMILA: Do you think that there has been a change, now that RIT has a new campus? EVANS: Definitely. There's much more student interest now in what is going on around the campus. I think the reason why is because of the residence halls. We all live to- gether and I think it is a warning to the Creeks. Before, the fraternities and sororities were the only big organizations on campus. But now the residence halls are organizing and having all sorts of social events; they are becoming very strong polit- ically: they really voice their optn- 27