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Student Association President-Elect David Bruen and Vice President-Elect Darnelle Stinfort will spend the summer reorganizing SA’s cabinet under the organization’s new constitution. 

The new SA constitution, which the organization passed in March, will add positions to next year’s cabinet and alter some existing positions. Co-chair positions will be renamed, and additional cabinet positions — including a director of internal operations and a new student advocate — will be created, Bruen said. 

The structure of the new cabinet will allow Bruen and Stinfort to delegate responsibilities across these positions to better fulfill their goals, said Joshua Shub-Seltzer, SA parliamentarian. 

“There has been an expectation that the SA president and vice president go to all the meetings and talk about all of this and they do it, but that shouldn’t be the case,” Bruen said. 

Bruen and Stinfort hope to hire candidates for new cabinet positions on Monday. They plan to have their agenda laid out by the upcoming academic year and want to begin delegating tasks to the cabinet this summer.  

“There are going to be things that we delegate for sure, but we’re not going to be slowed down to get to work on this because someone may not be in a position,” Bruen said.

One of the first initiatives Bruen and Stinfort plan to work on is their Green New Deal, which consists of assessing SA’s carbon output and creating a plan to make SA carbon neutral by May 2022. The new director of sustainability, a position not yet filled, will take control of this initiative.

“Major institutions and organizations, if they took the bold responsibility of addressing their own impact, would be moving in a much more positive direction,” Bruen said. “The reason we’re doing this, even though it might be small, is because it’s going to send a great example to the administration to accelerate their own goals.”

New York state banned plastic bags for retailers last year, but SU Food Services is still allowed to use them and has been doing so throughout the pandemic. A university-wide ban on plastic bags may be necessary, Bruen said.

“I think it starts with that uncomfortable change, but then people will get used to it and it’s not even going to be a second thought,” Stinfort said.

Bruen and Stinfort also plan to focus on financial accessibility at SU in the form of a tuition freeze or fixed tuition, Bruen said. 

“Things, radical things, big things, need to be implemented to just do the simple thing of just making sure that students are secure in their financial situation and don’t have to struggle in their finances and don’t have to worry about financial discussions with their family,” Bruen said.

While Bruen and Stinfort said that starting these conversations with the administration may pose a risk of hurting relationships between SA and the university, it is still important to begin discussing these issues, Stinfort said.

“It starts with talking with the administration and seeing where we can go from there and building that foundation and then navigating action plans to our cabinet members and to what steps we want to go forth and in which ways, so I think it definitely is fostering that relationship,” Stinfort said.

Published on May 9, 2021 at 6:38 pm

Contact Kailey: kmnorusi@syr.edu