Vote for an effective DSG

This year, the Editorial Board was disappointed by the lack of competition for Duke Student Government vice presidential positions. Given the potential for collaboration between administration and students, we hope all candidates will work next year to change DSG’s internal environment and campus perception.

For vice president of the academic affairs committee, we find two highly promising candidates but ultimately endorse Tara Bansal for her institutional knowledge and connections within the administration. We moderate this endorsement by recommending that she intently focus on following specific ideas to completion after carefully triaging her long list of possibilities. Although Annie Adair does not have the same institutional knowledge, we appreciate her greater understanding of how students experience academics at Duke. Her philosophy toward academic affairs was refreshing compared to past DSG rhetoric.

For vice president of the services committee, the Editorial Board strongly endorses JP Lucaci. Lucaci balances a thorough understanding of, and dedication to, improving student use of services with an attention to feasibility. He proposes using policy as a means to make tangible differences in student experiences, through, for example, interview clothing storage and online Counseling and Psychological Services registrations. We hope he takes advantage of the overlap of services with other committees to implement his ideas while clarifying the differences between the functions of the committees.

Next, Ilana Weisman is strongly suited to be the vice president for equity and outreach. Weisman has demonstrated fluent knowledge about issues on campus related to equity including, but not limited to, race, gender, sexuality and mental health issues. In terms of outreach, she has highlighted typically unsung breaks between domestic and international students and made promising suggestions to address the issue. Weisman has also shown a willingness to critique the effectiveness of the committee’s past projects. We believe DSG should welcome such introspection.

For vice president of the Durham and regional affairs committee, we endorse Tanner Lockhead. Lockhead brings with him excellent ideas for personally connecting with Durham residents through Knock and Talks, and his experiences growing up in Durham allow for him to identify meaningful inroads to connect with the city. The Board has expectations that Lockhead will use these experiences to push students to engage with Durham socially, politically and culturally.

For vice president of the facilities and the environment committee, we cautiously endorse Michael Norwalk. Although Norwalk demonstrates a thorough knowledge of ongoing University projects and has excellent intentions to increase communication so as to continuously update students, there are unanswered questions as to how he would alleviate the everyday burdens of such projects on student life.

For vice president of the residential life committee, we endorse George Mellgard. Mellgard expresses interest in improving the independent housing experience, but his ideas are not especially novel. We hope he uses his elevated position to muster his committee’s brain power and creatively tackle issues with independent housing.

Finally, we endorse Bryan Dinner for vice president for social culture. Dinner’s main goal is to connect various social groups on campus. He was supportive of connecting students to professors through informal engagements and has a strong grasp of what is, and is not, possible to work with the administration on, particularly with regard to alcohol policy. Nonetheless, given its overlap with other committees, we have doubts about the social culture committee. We hope Dinner will find novel issue spaces for the social culture committee to do work in, and we urge DSG, more broadly, to clearly define committee jurisdictions in the name of efficiency and relevancy.