This past year, I have had the amazing opportunity of serving the student body as the President of Student Affairs for the CU Student Government. I ran with Unite last spring because I believed in fighting for a better campus for all students. After winning the Spring 2013 elections, we got to work right away.
Over the past year, Unite has worked to make CU more affordable by pushing the campus to keep tuition increases low and expand the use of open and free textbooks by faculty. We poured countless hours into making campus safer for students by developing programs to improve campus climate and creating a plan to improve lighting on the Hill. We pulled together students from across campus to discuss campus safety and strategies to improve it. We created a same-year funding process for student groups that will help them receive the funding they need for each year.
We have been busy this year and made a great deal of progress on important student issues. But there is still more work to do. We still have a campus climate where our community fails to celebrate difference and instead disrespects and exploits it. Student groups still struggle navigating the system to plan events and apply for funding. Our campus still generates a huge amount of waste that needs to be diverted from landfills. Across a broad set of issues, there is still more work for us to do.
The only way that we can make progress on these challenging issues is by working together as a campus community. Unite will continue working with students and administrators to develop comprehensive bystander training for our campus community. Unite will work with the faculty to host dialogues on issues of inclusion and develop short videos that help faculty learn how to identify and address problematic behavior in the classroom. Unite will engage with student groups to create a more comprehensive support system for student groups. Unite will partner with the environmental center to create a new zero waste lab to create innovations in sustainability. Across all of these areas, we will work with the student body and other campus stakeholders to create solutions to difficult problems.
Unite has specific plans to improve campus because we have years of experience advocating for students in the student government. Our tri-executive candidates have almost six years of combined experience in CU student government. We have great ideas, extensive experience and endless passion to continue the progress on making our campus better for all students. Your vote matters. We need to Unite our campus and continue the fight for a better CU, together.
Chris Schaefbauer, Boulder, Colo.
