2010 SUSA Elections are in

The Smith Undergraduate Student Association (SUSA) held their annual elections in room 1330 of Van Munching Hall, on Dec. 6 to replace all the top positions in their organization.

Four of the five executive board positions were filled. These include the president and the vice presidents of finance, events, marketing and administration. The vice president of events position remains vacant.

The four committee chairs were appointed. The community service, fundraising, social programming and new student involvement chairs are all responsible for putting together events in their respective categories.

Voters used electronic clickers to select the candidates for the various positions. Candidates were required to deliver a 2-3 minute speech for each position they ran for in addition to answering two questions from the audience. Members that held previous board and chair positions, excluding the president, and assembly representatives, voted in the election.

SUSA is a student run organization that does three basic things: support the 24 undergraduate clubs, run the SUSA assembly and put together events for anyone and everyone at the school. The SUSA assembly is a meeting held twice a month that allows students to present bills to resolve problems and create opportunities at the school.

Vice president of finance, Benjamin Kastner plans to use the SUSA budget to increase the number of events hosted by SUSA.  Kastner aims to host larger events to reach out to and attract new students, in efforts to increase membership.

The vice president of marketing is tasked with carrying out all marketing activities for SUSA, and assisting all member organizations (mostly clubs and committees) with their marketing efforts.  The job includes: posting flyers in the Van Munching Kiosks, creating marketing materials for SUSA events, managing a marketing committee that leads marketing initiatives for SUSA and overseeing all marketing channels, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Girish Chaskar was elected vice president of marketing.  Chaskar calls for team collaboration within the leaders of SUSA, and communication with every club.

Pratik Dixit was named vice president of administration.  Dixit's job is to manage the SUSA assembly and to maintain all contact information for the organization. Dixit has to manage all attendance at meetings.

"My biggest goal is increasing the assembly awareness to non SUSA members, and to voice those students opinions through assembly," said Dixit.

Fundraising chair, Hanania Falik seeks to raise sufficient funds to have events of "substance."  Falik explained that his primary goal is to increase the funds through collaborations with other clubs, and sponsorship. 

One of the questions that was addressed to Perri Finkelstein, who holds the new student involvement committee chair, was how she plans to get people involved with SUSA.  Finkelstein outlined that the most important target audience is freshman because they are the future leaders.  Finkelstein plans to use Facebook to promote SUSA and to get the word out to freshman and new students.

"I'm very happy with how the elections turned out.  We have bright young leadership," said Adam Saunders, former vice president of administration.

Newly elected SUSA president, Brian Doyle is excited to get to work beginning next semester.  Doyle has many responsibilities. Some functions the president performs are holding meetings, including: a monthly presidents' meeting for all club presidents and SUSA committee chairs weekly executive Board meetings.

The president communicates with the dean of undergraduate studies and dean of the Smith School, and assigns tasks to executive board members and committee chairs. The president is ultimately responsible for the success of the organization.

"I think we have a really good team.  The most important thing is that we work together as a team and to continue to strive toward our goal," said Doyle.