It’s SGA election season again, and you know what that means: Self-important SGA bureaucrats running around trying to appear, for at least three days out of a year, like anything but self-important SGA bureaucrats. However, there is one campaign that seems to have deviated from this time-honored formula for “success”, causing quite a stir. Indeed, it seems as though Richard Elliott, notable for being the founder of UMBC Progressives, and his running mate Maheen Haq actually plan to DO things if elected; namely, to recreate the events of the smash-hit musical “Les Miserables”.

  Now, I usually focus on real-life politics, so I was hesitant to cover this infantile charade we call the SGA elections, but after much insistence on the part of my superiors, I relented and ventured to Bio 120, the lair of the UMBC Progressives. There I found a scene I was not quite prepared for.

  Inside sat a number of undergrads, singing of the merriment of youth and the hardships of being a student. I pushed through the crowd, seeking out Richard in the hopes of an interview with him. He was not hard to find, however, as he stood on a desk and shouted over the din of the musical number in a moody tenor:

    “It is time for us all to decide who we are

    Do we fight for alright snacks at Late Night? No!

    Have you asked of yourself what’s the price you might pay?

    Is this simply a game for penniless students to play?

    The colors of the school are changing the SGA

    Gold! With loans we now have none!

    Black! The dark of morning lab!

    Gold! Like sunrise on the Quad!

    Black! Spring Break begins at last!”

  After this triumphant chorus, the lights dimmed, save for a single spot, trained on Executive Vice President candidate Maheen Haq, who began to sing in a lilting soprano, accompanied by a soft bell choir:

    “I dreamed a dream in Senior High

    When hopes were high, and loans untaken,

    I dreamed of a degree in Poli Sci

    I dreamed Hrabowski’d be forgiving

    When I was young, and had straight A’s

    My dreams were made, and used, and wasted

    There were no internships unpaid

    No SEB event undone

    No free food untasted.”

  With this heart-wrenching melody complete, the lights returned, and SGA Senate candidate Nate Hoxie began his rendition of “Castle in PAHB”. At this point, I decided to make my leave. However, given that their opponents are the ticket of Josh “Literally Javert” Massey and Markya “Played by Russell Crowe” Reed, and the ticket of Collin Sullivan and Chiamaka Ugboh, who are best described as “the two night watchmen who beat up Jean Valjean in the first act: dickish, forgettable, and really only there to get you on the side of the protagonists,” we here at MBC News figure we might as well put our support behind ElliotHaq 2017, after all, we’ve all got to die someday, may as well make it during a critically acclaimed musical.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Team took first place at the 2017 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition held in San Antonio, Texas this past weekend. The team defeated nine other regional winners from across the country in a contest to protect their networks from cyber attacks and threats efficiently and effectively.

“We are as excited about the national cyber defense competition as we are about an NCAA athletic competition,” says UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski. “UMBC is developing brainpower to protect our nation and build the economy in the Baltimore region. Our partnerships with the Department of Defense, NSA, the Naval Academy, NIST, and dozens of cyber companies at bwtech@UMBC and beyond expose students to authentic problems and allow them to immediately provide value to government and business employers. Our campus is an ecosystem for cybersecurity talent development.”

Cyber Dawgs’ faculty advisor Charles Nicholas, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, calls the win “my proudest moment at UMBC.” He explains that the competition puts the team in a realistic situation that requires them to use resources and rely on their colleagues and teammates in challenging situations. During 14 hours of competition over two days, the teams are not able to interact with their coaches. Eight students used a dozen pieces of equipment throughout the tournament to keep the services on their network accessible and make sure that the systems are not brought down by hacks or cyber attacks.

“We are absolutely ecstatic with our win at Nationals. We have worked very hard to be the first team from the Mid-Atlantic region to win nationals,” said Christian Beam ‘18, computer science. “I am filled with pride to be a part of such an amazing team, and we are looking forward to returning to compete at the 2018 Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition!”

Leading up to the national and regional tournaments, the team spent hours training, studying, and reviewing scenarios that they might encounter during the competition. They prepared and practiced counterattacks to combat attacks from the other teams.

In early April, the Cyber Dawgs placed first in the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, and solidified their spot in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. The Cyber Dawgs beat teams from Towson University, the University of Maryland, College Park, and Drexel University during the regional competition.

The Cyber Dawgs have been featured in The Daily Record, Technical.ly Baltimore, and Texas Public Radio.

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

What would be your first priority, if elected?

Richard: I think the first thing we want to do is go to the Shriver Center and talk to them about opening up more internship opportunities, more service learning opportunities, because we can connect them with nonprofits and other organizations that work in Baltimore City and the surrounding community. I think that’s the first thing we do, because that’s [mine] and Maheen’s passion.

Neither of you have extensive SGA experience. Do you think that will play in favor or against your ticket?

Richard: I believe Bentley was able to do it just fine, so I think we shouldn’t have an issue.

How do you think that affects your knowledge of the inner processes of the SGA?

Richard: Well, I believe we’ll have to learn on the job, unfortunately. But there are people who are working with us who have been in the SGA in the past, and we’ve been told that with the current department system, we don’t have to necessarily use that system. We could try and change it, so we can have like a working rotation of different activities that are on our platform. But I think if Bentley was able to do it, if Jeffrey Kee was able to do it in the past, I don’t think it’s like an impossibility. And I think for the people in the debate, if that had been asked, it would have to be a dichotomy of “Do you think Bentley was qualified? Either yes, he’s done the job fine, or no, he’s failed,” and I don’t think anybody would say that he’s failed.

In the SGA, what would you most like to change, from the previous administration to yours?

Richard: I think that one thing I would definitely like to change is the election process. With the election process, I think on the eve of it, the information should be sent out to every student, so that people could see the platforms, people could hear the names, I think that would do a lot to cut down on the popularity contest image that the SGA has.

What was the most valuable lesson you have learned in your previous experiences, and how can you apply it to your administration?

Richard: I was just going to say learning how to like… having the confidence in those around you that you are willing to delegate leadership roles to other people. Because when I made UMBC Progressives, it was more or less just me doing it, and then when it became an official student org, recently, now we have tons of people. We have a vice-president, we have a treasurer, we have Chairs of Social Development, we have people who work in the State House, people who want to make progress within their party. So if can get the [comfortability] within your staff that you don’t mind delegating tasks, I think that’s a pivotal step that a lot of leaders don’t know how to make.

What would be the biggest challenges you would face in SGA? How would you handle them, specifically?

Richard: What I believe would be the biggest issue? I think the biggest issue, at least at present, would be like hostility towards our message. I think that the other people who are running for SGA have an idea of “SGA at UMBC is only intended to serve the needs of the students at UMBC and nobody else”, and I don’t agree with that message. I agree with Maheen that harnessing the energy and the intellectual vigor of this school to assist others in the outside community is really a loftier goal and a goal that I think is more important.

Maheen: But additionally, we also care about the student body, and we will continue to work very hard to make all of these goals happen, which… And a lot of these came from the student body coming up to us and being like “these are our concerns.” We have mental health, we have sexual assault, environmentalism as part of our platform, and we will work vigorously to ensure that that happens.

Richard, some debate observers thought you came off as arrogant and a bit rude. What do you have to say to that?

Richard: If they think that indicating or trying to show that I care about the community, trying to ask questions about… For instance, they asked a question about the stipend, I assume under the pretense that I wouldn’t know about the stipend, but my question regarding that was, is there a problem with the SGA if one third of members have to have their stipends cut? I was like very fiery in the debate, I will agree with that. But to say arrogant, I think that questions regarding our qualifications are arrogant for people to ask. For people who’ve been at this university, for people who’ve met me and Maheen, I think they would know, just from interacting with us, that we are qualified for these positions.

Sustainability seems to be a central part of your platform. Why?

Richard: We believe that… we can help form people’s minds that sustainability is more than just an idea, it should be an ingrained part of the culture at UMBC.

Are there any other “green” measures you want to implement during your administration? How would you do it?

Richard: We’d like to plant more trees on the campus, because I think that around the rim, for instance, of Erickson field, I think that if we put trees there, it’ll help beautify and oxygenate the campus. Getting UMBC to be 50% carbon neutral is a goal of Samina Musa’s, and anything we can do to help her with that goal would be nice. I will agree, for that point at least, I don’t know what she wants us to do, but whatever steps the environmental orgs recommend for us, we can take those steps by moving them forward and by funding them and helping promote them.

Richard, you have described the SGA, and the SGA culture as ‘toxic’. Why?

Richard: I’ve been here for four years, and in that four years, I’ve seen very little action put forth. The thing I’ve personally seen as a student, not to say that they haven’t been done, but things that have been presented to me as a member of the student body. Collin’s been in the SGA for a year, and the thing he touted was Election Night Extravaganza. Election Night Extravaganza is nice, but that’s more or less just a viewing party. I don’t think that creates social change. When I was a freshman, Jeffrey Kee was president. I believe in that time he got the RAC renovated. And then Anthony Jankoski was president and didn’t get anything done, and this year and under Ganesh as well, I didn’t see anything in particular get done. That, along with like the election process and how it’s been fraught with trouble year in and year out, including this year, has led me to believe that a lot of students believe SGA has a toxic culture. In fact, I’ve heard it from SGA members myself.

What specific steps would you take in order to combat this toxicity?

Richard: I think that having an election process where the information is sent to the entire undergraduate body, to fight like, the popularity contest stigma, that would be positive.

Maheen: That’s what it is now. It is a popularity contest.

Maheen, you have said that one of your goals is to connect students to social justice movements in Baltimore. Why Baltimore? Why not start on-campus, since that is where you operate?

Maheen: So, as someone who comes from a very racist town, and a very conservative town, I think I know what discrimination looks like, and to be completely honest with you, though UMBC may have its share of troubles, I feel as if those in Baltimore City are more… what’s the word… concerning. Justice movements at UMBC, personally I feel like they’re organically already being taken care of.

You have both mentioned increased resources for WMBC and The Retriever. Why?

Richard: In my experience, I’ve worked with WMBC and The Retriever, and I think that they are potentially great places for students who want to creatively express themselves. Secondly, to hone skills for potential future careers. Third, they’re great sources of student news. For instance, on our post, Feyi Ojo said that The Retriever doesn’t need more funding. Increased resources doesn’t necessarily mean more funding. If we can set up a mailing list for you all, to the entire undergraduate body, that people can opt-out of if they don’t want, your news can reach more people and be more useful. If your news is only reaching 20 people on campus, what’s the point? So, if we can give you the means to better serve your news to the student body or to give your airwaves to the student body, we think you guys should have that.

Richard, you are the founder of UMBC Progressives. Will you take a step back from its management and its activities if you are elected? If not, how do you think that might affect your administration, and how students (particularly those of more conservative ideologies) might perceive you?

Richard: If I’m elected, I will definitely take a step back and delegate more responsibilities to those below me, so that I have the free time to do SGA President stuff, but I definitely want to have as active of a role in the progressive movement as possible henceforth.

What specific tactics would you use in order to increase student involvement with the SGA?

Richard: We believe in events where people can come and meet the student body. And again, we’d better utilize the email system that has literally everybody tapped in. If you can do workshops, no pressure, people don’t feel like they’re being put in some weird political scheme, as they have felt in the past, it can foster beautiful, beautiful movement henceforth, and especially in a time like right now, when I think more people want to get involved in things than ever before.

You pointed out you would like to streamline funding for student organizations. How exactly would you do that?

Richard: We think that like, organizations should get a certain amount of funding mandated at the beginning of the year. Again, we have not said the amount, this is subject to debate, whether it’s $25 or $100, because we think that orgs that would ever have to go to this SGA and ask them for $25 or so, that is such a small amount of money, the time they end up waiting to get the money would really be a deterrent for asking for money in the first place.

Wouldn’t giving all organizations a minimum fund bring on allocation problems? What if some organizations don’t need funding?

Richard: They can opt out. Anyone who says they don’t want money, they can just opt out of it.

Maheen: And then we’ll take it back and reallocate it.

Are you aware of the Stipend Review Committee? What do you think of the measure and its purpose? Would you do anything to change it?

Richard: Yes. It’s effective in letting me know, as an outsider of the SGA — as I have been so characterized — that almost one third of SGA members have had their stipends halved. So it’s been effective in communicating to me and to a lot of the student body who read The Retriever that a lot of the SGA is getting paid for work they have been elected and employed to do on behalf of the student body. If one third of the SGA is having their stipends cut, there clearly is a problem of either A: people are maintaining the Jankoski rule of bringing their friends on board, or B: people are being appointed and not held accountable. During the debate, I applauded Collin Sullivan for helping to create the SRC, I think it was honestly a great thing to incorporate, and we think that the one fix that could be incorporated, is perhaps having a discussion, among members of the student body, about what they think the SRC “savings” should go to. For instance, Collin wants to do a student spaces on campus thing. The money that is being taken from these people who apparently aren’t doing their jobs to satisfaction could dedicated to my idea, doing a mural on campus. Or to like, putting a fountain on campus, or to otherwise beautify our campus. I think the issue with the SRC is not that it makes things ineffective, it shows the ineffectiveness of things, but leaves the question of what’s going to happen with this remaining funding? We think that we can use that, maybe put it up to the student body, put it up for a vote for all I care.

How prepared are you to deal with students who may be having issues with our nation’s current political climate? What specific strategies do you have in mind in order to address their concerns?

Maheen: Specific strategies? I would say promoting spaces where students can come in and have those conversations, right? So interfaith dialogue, inter-religious communication. Creating and promoting those spaces through the Interfaith Center, the Mosaic Center, and promoting those dialogues.

The post Interview with SGA candidates Richard Elliott and Maheen Haq appeared first on The Retriever.

What would be your first priority, if elected?

Josh: I think what we hope to do is truly hit the ground running. By the Monday or sometime that week after, we’d like to have some application with some sort of tenement structure as we start working with the Senate and the Finance Board, because we’re in an odd state this year in which the election is at the same time, but the semester ends really late, so… We have a month between the results of the election and the end of the semester, so we can use that month to get what we need to get done started. Things don’t turn over until May 15, so we can talk to current Senators, current Finance Board representatives, and then talk to the ones that are incoming and try to see what really want to accomplish as an organization next year. So this semester has given us a little bit of time to actually hash those things out, more than in a regular election.

What was the most valuable lesson you learned during the time in SGA, and how would you apply it in your administration?

Josh: I think learning the things that are unique to the SGA and as it relates to students, is that it’s difficult to reach every single student, and being that voice for every student, and I thing SGA has struggled with that in the past. I think that we need to be focusing on things in general; I think the SGA has done a lot of good work at trying to gauge the student interest, but I think we need to actively keep seeking that out.

You have said that the SGA must be more action-oriented? What do you mean by that, and what strategies would you use in order to move the SGA in that direction?

Markya: Yes. I don’t want to say that it is wrong to think — that’s fantastic. We need people with good ideas.

Josh: Think and discuss.

Markya: Right. But, if you’re only discussing your ideas and you’re not implementing them, then what’s the use, what’s the point? We need people… We need a balance of people who are innovative and have these great ideas and people who can actually execute said ideas. We’re lacking the action-oriented part as it stands now. And I think that one way — there are many ways we could try to figure this out — I think it requires many conversations with lots of people, but one way we have talked about in the past is like, when looking at the directors and at the system directors in departments, I think we focus a lot on picking experts in that field versus picking people who know how to organize and mobilize people to do a certain task.

Another big point in your platform is the offer of free hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. How would you deal with the potential logistical issues that come with this proposal?

Josh: A lot of this has to deal with the Registrar, right? So when classes are scheduled, they are essentially scheduled all through the Registrar. Like, when departments want to put up classes at a certain time, certain rooms, and things like that, all of that happens through the Registrar, for the main Fall and Spring semesters. Working with both the Registrar and some key departments that offer like the bulk of classes during that time, and the faculty Senate, is something that we will very well prioritize over the summer, because then… Class registration starts in October. So then by September, halfway through September is when departments are saying when they want to offer their classes. With this, we hope to in June say “hey, we want this to happen, and we’re willing to put whatever we need to do to make this happen and we are very interested in making this happen,” making sure we hold those conversations over the summer and are persistent about said conversations as well.

Have you pitched your new free hour idea to the school’s administration? Have you polled the student body and faculty? If yes, what was the reception?

Josh: We’ve had several individual conversations with some groups. The SGA Department of Academic Affairs is working especially on the free hour project, because there were some talks about it maybe going away from Monday, Wednesday, and Friday even. So we, from those conversations, have been talking to various administration members, trying to work things out, like how would this look for rooms through event and conference services in the Commons, or how would this look for the LRC, and how is tutoring offered, and like, how will this work with those offices? And then, also, looking at the parking struggle on campus. Parking is something students, including myself, always find frustrating; it’s a very challenging issue. I will say that the Police are very in favor of some kind of rescheduling of classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I personally spoke with [Deputy Chief] Paul Dillon about this, and the police, the people who run parking, obviously, say that the most congested time for students is Tuesday and Thursday 11am to 3pm. So… we hope that trying to move around class schedules to be smarter and schedule things farther apart… We don’t have to build a new garage, changing class schedules is really easy and costs significantly less money than building a new garage. So… just trying to work through that with those various campus stake holders… and we’ve talked to some administration members and we’re making our rounds.

How would you reach out to commuting students, and how would you help them be more integrated on campus life?

Markya: I think the first step to that would probably be to talk to Admissions and Orientation, because that is something that they do, and when they do it well they do it very well. So I’ve been an Orientation Peer Advisor for two years, and it seemed like with the transfer sessions they did a decent job because they had transfer students telling their stories, but I think that we can elaborate on that, and we can really strategize about how we can get transfer and commuting students integrated to the campus. I think it’s a matter of where do you find these resources? It’s that, but it’s also what Josh said about like, good marketing. You can’t really have one without the other. We need to figure out ways to better market student organizations and events, while simultaneously prepping students as they come in.

How important are library hours to you? Why, unlike other tickets, have you not proposed a 24/7 opening schedule for the library?

Markya: Compromise. And you can’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results. Everyone says 24/7, but does the library want 24/7, have they talked to the library to see what, you know, is good for them?

Josh: If they had worked with them and seen how the library structure is, and how like… It’s developing those relationships, and also thinking like, what is feasible, right? You want to open the library 24/7 when all seven floors are unoccupied at four in the morning? Like, that’s… it’s being smart, it’s not… The 24/5 is not necessarily the entire library; it could be the first two or three floors. But what we’re doing is we’re trying to work with people, and not trying to be truly radical, but trying to do things that can actually be accomplished in a year.

During the debate, you mentioned wanting to improve UMBC’s connections and relationships to Catonsville, Arbutus, and other surrounding areas. What is the school’s current relationship with those areas, and what do you think of it?

Markya: Currently, as it stands, or as it seems, from conversations that people who are more qualified to speak on it than I, we haven’t really had any sort of relationship with Arbutus, which is interesting because as soon as you step out of the circle, you’re there.

Josh: Yeah, and so… working with that, and other businesses on developing more relationships, because if we’re putting pieces of UMBC directly in the community, then that means that they have like a point of reference for the university, and they feel… students can feel like they are part of the greater community, because … UMBC is that bubble, and you’re a student here, but you don’t feel like you’re a member of Arbutus, you don’t feel like you’re a member of Catonsville. If we are putting ourselves more directly into the community, and students can see themselves actively contributing to the community, then we can hope that students will bring a sense of ownership over the community also, beyond UMBC back to the campus.

What would you change in the student organization funding process? Is there anything that needs to be improved? How would you do it?

Markya: Let me tell you about the student organization pot of money! The way it was set up, last year anyway, $250,000 was in the pot of money that was available for student organizations. The Finance Board decides who gets how much money, that is what they do. The budget was just passed… I think yesterday?

Josh: It was passed yesterday, by a close vote.

M: And they reduced the amount of money that student orgs have by $11,000. That’s $239,000 that they [now] have. Which sounds like a lot, but I don’t understand why it was decreased. I think that if you’re going to make cuts to the budget, which was what needed to be done, the cuts need to go… elsewhere, you don’t need to cut the resources that you’re giving to student organizations, because that’s who we’re representing. It just doesn’t make any sense.

What is your opinion on the Stipend Review Committee? Is it effective? Would you do anything different to ensure the accountability of SGA members? Why do you think so many members had their stipends cut recently?

Josh: So, I think that the SRC is very effective, as someone who co-authored it I’m a little biased. I think it has been fairly effective this year. It’s shown a lot to people from different parts of the organization what it really means to be in SGA. What is SGA doing, is it making adequate progress? I think that while it is doing a great job this year, it can still be improved on.

What would you do in order to ensure and promote transparency within the SGA and between the SGA and the student body?

Josh: One of the projects that I’ve been working on is the SGA Initiative Tracker. It’s a website that is supposed to lay out all the projects that SGA is doing, the progress being made on each project, and individual tasks and who’s working on what project. And, if a student wants to get involved in our project they can join the project. It is currently up and running, however its implementation has been very slow. I think that next year… we’ve had two good years of pilots. There’s tangible progress of what needs to be done, and that can be explained very effectively.

What do you think will be your biggest challenge during your administration?

Markya: We really want to make a culture change, like a big culture change.

Josh: Both within and outside of the organization.

Markya: Right. And that’s a lot to take on for just two people, so finding people who are set on doing the same thing, and who can help us change that overall… It’s going to take a while, it’s going to take some time.

Josh: And it’s working with the other presidential tickets.The election determines who the students prefer to lead, now we’re all going to lead together. We each bring something different to the table, we all do and it’s very important that we understand that these things are complex. So, collaboration is probably our greatest strength. The challenge is, how do we best lead right after? Because a lot of people focus a lot on finals, and that’s… those are very important. But it’s the challenge of finding how we best lead, together and how do we collaborate in the most effective way? I think that is the greatest challenge that lies ahead: coordinating people. SGA people come and go. It’s a challenge. How do we get people to buy into the organization? How do we increase their own ownership over the organization? How are we thinking about that? I talked to someone that was in one of our departments last semester, and he said “Well I don’t really have the time” and so on, and I understand, because we’re doing a clerical job…  It’s really trying to increase the interest in buy in and their ownership of the organization. Because it’s not the president’s organization, it’s the people’s organization.

The post Interview with SGA candidates Josh Massey and Markya Reed appeared first on The Retriever.

What would be your first priority, if elected? How would you accomplish it?

Collin: I think that we talked about this during the debate a lot. I think our first priority is getting as many people involved as we possibly can from day one. We think that this means getting people involved on issues or problems that we see on campus and identifying how to come up with solutions and recruiting new members that way. Chiamaka is an Orientation Peer Advisor and she’s really going to be leaning on that experience to help bring in those new students. I’m a commuter and I’m going to be working with commuters to make sure they’re more involved because that is an area on campus that is very difficult to get people to stay involved because you come on campus and then you go home. We would need to figure out a way to work with commuters to identify problems that they want to contribute on. So from day one our biggest priority is getting more people involved.

Since you have previous SGA experience, how do you think that plays into your advantage?

Chiamaka: It gives us experience. We understand how SGA works and we understand the faults because we’ve been in SGA. We understand that there are certain problems that need to be addressed, and because we have the past experience we’re able to go and hopefully become VP and president and execute those faults that we see.

Collin: That and, like, being in different capacities helped as well. Chiamaka was the First Year Ambassador so we have insight into what that program is and how it should look like. I was a part of the Communications Department before I became Senator and now I’m Assistant Speaker so I think that between the two of us we have seen — we’ve pretty much seen everything between the senate and the executive branch. We’ve both done some time at Finance Board, going to meetings. So we know the organization really well. We know its strengths and we are able to identify how to improve upon its weaknesses.

What is the one lesson or skill you learned during your SGA experience, and how will apply it in your administrations?

Collin: I think building relationships goes a really long way and that means between members that are involved in SGA, but it means with administrators as well. If you want to get things done on this campus, you have to have a really good relationship with the students, faculty, and staff. That is how change happens, and change happens through having really, really strong relationships. So that is one of the biggest things that I’ve learned and it sounds so simple but it’s actually really difficult to build a really good relationship.

Chiamaka: And building on relationships is pretty much what I was going to say in terms of what I’ve learned is collaboration. This kind of goes hand in hand because you can ge t– not saying that one person can’t get something done — but when you have a team – and that’s what we have right now — you can really accomplish a lot, and with collaborating people are bringing out their different perspectives, bringing out new ideas, and you’re just able to really get stuff done because you have the help from others. So that’s one thing that we’ve definitely learned.

How did you come up with the CARE acronym for your campaign?

Collin: We didn’t. We worked together with our team of 15 people and it was some serious brainstorming. We all sat down and we had a conversation about “okay, what do we care about?” What are the things we want to change on our campus? And we noticed four words that we could kind of come up with together and I think someone on the team – I don’t remember who it was – someone said, CARE? And someone else came with “Together, we will.” Chiamaka and I were there facilitating the conversation, adding our own thoughts occasionally, but really we were there listening to what everyone else was thinking and trying to synthesize it to come up with the plan. And that’s what we did.

Most other tickets listed specific ideals and initiatives in their platforms. Can you list a few of yours, and how you would achieve them (for example, extended library hours, weekend programming, expansion of the Baltimore Collegetown Transit Network)?

Collin: We have a document full of potential initiatives that we want to do, so for communication one of the things – and I talked about this during the debate – was that we want to make sure that we have “office hours” but they’re not in the SGA office, they’re out and about in the UMBC community. For accountability one of the things that we want to do is at the beginning of every semester, every single body needs to come up with actionable, quantifiable, goals and those goals need to be released to the public and SGA needs to be held accountable for completing those things. For respect, that is one that we’re still trying to hone in on. We’re starting to look at diversity more and figuring out what we can do with diversity but we’re working with a lot of people about what are some good initiatives that we can take.

Chiamaka: I just wanted to say that I think it’s great also that we do have specific initiatives and we’re definitely going to do [that]. But one thing that I truly love about our platform is the whole communication part because I think it’s very important that we connect with the student body because, yes, we’re doing all these great initiatives so we need to. But in the beginning we need to make sure we’re having conversations with the student body and making sure the initiatives we’re doing truly represents what the students want because that’s very important and having conversations with the student body and communicating with the student body and continuing on the forms that we’ve done already but making sure that we’re making it on a larger scale so we can get more student feedback is very important.

You said that you two did not work alone in your platform. Why did you get a 15-17 person team to work on a platform with you? What was beneficial about it? Were there any issues that came with so many people working on it?

Collin: We have a total of 17 people, including Chiamaka and myself. So, again, I think we talk a lot about how important diversity is to us. There’s a lot of diversity in a lot of different ways in our team. You have people of different majors, people of different backgrounds, people of different walks of life, people of different skin colors, people of different religions, people of different sexual orientations, people of different gender identifications. That was so critical to us because I can only relate to one kind of person. Chiamaka can only relate to one kind of person. So I’m not going to say I’m for diversity and not have a team that is diverse in every way possible.

Let’s focus on Communication. What issues with communication do you see in the current administration?

Chiamaka: So, personally for me, I think SGA, because of past administrations, has also had a tainted reputation. I think that SGA does great work, yes, but you also have the student body that — there’s a disconnect — with seeing SGA and the student body and SGA where it’s the student body, so there should not be a disconnect. It should feel like everyone walking around undergraduate should feel like they’re a part of SGA and they’re a part of making change and they’re a part of making UMBC a greater or better campus and I think there’s a complete disconnect in terms of — you have people in SGA who are doing great things, but are there initiatives that are truly representing what the student body wants?  I just think it’s really important that whatever SGA is doing, we are really representing the student body. I strongly believe that we need to make sure we’re hearing students’ concerns and making sure that we’re doing what the student wants.

In what innovative ways will you expand the SGA’s reach?

Collin: So one of the things I love to do is to learn from other universities. What are they doing well and what are they not doing well? So I’ve already done this already with work when I came up with the Appeals Board — I contacted 10 different universities across the nation, and they were our peer institutions, they were other institutions in USM, and I made the Appeals Board by looking at them and saying: okay, what are they doing right, but more importantly, what are they doing wrong? And how can we make this right for UMBC. And I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that; about looking and seeing what other institutions are doing and figuring out: what are their strengths, what is UMBC’s spin on this, and how can we make this even better for us?

Do you think there are accountability issues with the SGA at present? What would you do to fix them?

Chiamaka: I think in any administration you have people who say they are going to do something and then it doesn’t happen. That’s just really how life goes, people say things and sometimes it doesn’t get implemented through time; something happened, but I think a great idea that Collin and I have is that as an administration, we kind of put it out there what our goal is so that way students can hold us accountable. I think that’s just one of the ways besides the SRC that we can really do that.

Collin: I think, though, that we have already done a lot to make accountability better and we’re not interested in regressing. We’re only looking to how to make things better.

How would you expand accountability measures for the SGA? Do you have any specific ideas in mind?

Collin: In terms of actual measurement, I think that there needs to be response into, responses from the SRC, I think the norm that has been made this year is good but could be made even better, like what do you do with someone that gets their half stipend. Because it needs to be beyond the conversation, conversation is good, it’s critical for long term success, but there should be something else. So, I think we’re taking steps in the right direction.

In your election page, you say: “SGA has been so focused on personalities, scandals, and drama.” Can you elaborate on that? Additionally, what would you do to improve it?

Collin: I’m not sure how much more I want to elaborate on that. I think my point that I’m trying to make is that the focus has not been on the work. The focus has not been on making things happen. I think the focus has been on the drama, and that’s not okay. That’s not what the student activity fee goes towards. It goes to making things happen.

Chiamaka: I would touch on once again, SGA does great things. The drama just sometimes hides that. People don’t see the great things that students in SGA or students anywhere are doing, because drama hides that. In any organization, we’re doing great work, and when drama comes people just focus on the drama and it’s sad and unfortunate that people don’t know what people are working on a and doing for the students because they just only look at the drama.

Collin: So we just want to remove it. Not have it. We don’t care, that’s not the focus. The focus is what we can do to make this place better. That is the overarching question that we are constantly asking ourselves.

The post Interview with SGA candidates Collin Sullivan and Chiamaka Ugboh appeared first on The Retriever.

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