Incumbent Jeff Seiser will be FUSA president for next year, working alongside new Vice President Lauren Johnson ’11, both of whom ran unopposed on Tuesday.

Seiser received 679 votes and Johnson received 650 votes.

This new team plans on continuing the same initiatives FUSA had announced for last term, such as transportation and now financial aid, by continuing their strong liaisons to the administration through 26 FUSA committees.’ However, many of their overall FUSA goals deals with increasing student participation and knowledge of the work being done in the student government.’

‘We strongly increased our visibility and connection with the administration,’ Seiser said.’ ‘We need to continue with that.’

While keeping administration relations able and active to see that issues are being met, FUSA wants to put more of a focus on building closer ties to the student body. Seiser said that FUSA needs to ‘increase exposure,’ which he said would be done by training senators and creating a better marketing team within FUSA.

‘I think we need to train FUSA members to talk out more in casual settings about what they are doing,’ he said.’ ‘For me, when I’m anywhere on campus, I present myself as the FUSA president and people know me as that.’ In casual settings, I even talk about what FUSA is doing.’

Johnson agreed saying that marketing FUSA will be a main objective next year.

‘I think most students think that all FUSA does is programming,’ she said. ‘It’s definitely important to spread the message that we do much more than that.’

While emphasizing the power of word-of-mouth to promote students’ knowledge of FUSA activities, Seiser also said creating new positions and tweaking the FUSA constitution will help FUSA reach their goals.

‘My biggest problem was trying to define the roles in FUSA,’ he said. ‘It really took me a year to figure out what I was able to do and change within the framework of it all.’

One major change that FUSA hopes will help market the organization is the position of secretary of communication to secretary of marketing and public relations.’ Seiser said this position, as described in the new constitution, now better reflects the position.

Jordan Hummel ’10, the current secretary of communication, was the first to hold this post.
‘She wanted to be a liaison to media on campus, which was tough,’ said Seiser.

Now, the position will focus on using other outlets to promote FUSA initiatives.

When asked how FUSA will be trying to get more students involved in FUSA, as the number of senators has decreased to Seiser said that it will take further efforts.

‘I don’t think [students] understand the potential there is in the positions we hold,’ he said.
Seiser also said that FUSA is looking to build community within the organization and ‘make FUSA fun,’ and hopes such will be achieved through the creation of a new position: secretary of the interior.

‘We need to be more of a team,’ he said.

Students Vivian Carballo ’10 and Jared Elliot ’09, who work at the BCC Info Desk, said they are in favor of Seiser and looking forward to changes that will happen during his next term.

‘He’s in here more than me,’ said Elliot.’ ‘He lives here [in the BCC] so he must be working hard.’

Agreeing with Elliot, Carballo added, ‘I’ve known Jeff since freshman year and I know he’s very dedicated.’ You can tell, so I’m excited to see that he won.’

In terms of wanting to see change, Elliot said he wants to see more transparency, while Carballo expressed grievances with the library closing early.

Freshmen Jordan Sweeney and Ashley Santos said that they don’t know much about Seiser, but hopes that FUSA continues their work with transportation, which especially concerns them as they will not be able to have cars next year.

‘As part of IRHA, I know that we’ve been trying to put together a petition to make sure the shuttles on campus are running on time,’ Sweeney said.

Sweeney also added that off-campus shuttling should be addressed as soon as possible because sophomores were revoked car privileges.

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