Interview With Sullivan-Tonkovich

The Heights:What's on your platform?

CS: Our slogan has been "including U in UGBC." So like Dan says, after speaking with lots of student leaders on campus, and administrators, we really came together, reflected on our experiences, and decided that the most important part of our platform is including the undergraduate student body in student government. That means the undergraduate population as a whole, and the undergraduate as an individual. One of our biggest things that we want to do as soon as we get elected into office is advertise the Create your Own Directorship program and the UGBC Startup Fund. Right now in UGBC you can apply for a directorship that's already established. And while UGBC is already established and really good at looking at students' needs, there are a lot of passions that students have that aren't really being addressed. It's kind of hard for students to get involved right now, so what we're saying is, if you have an idea, come to UGBC, and we'll help you do it. Splash is the example that really came to mind. I was fortunate to get involved with UGBC through Splash. We started a program that got a lot of success and now it's a successful RSO on campus, and it wouldn't have been possible without UGBC. Now I want other students to have that opportunity.

DT: The undergraduate government has an immense amount of resources at their disposal, from the human capital side with people, from an experience in policy side, from a management side, from a financing side—all of the elements you need to run a successful program. When you come up with a new idea, you need that sponsorship, that full support behind you. That's the confidence and reassurance that this program provides. You have that open avenue. You can apply and have the full support of a well-organized group behind you

CS: The other thing is, UGBC has arguably the best student leaders on campus. Why not let students that have these ideas get that mentorship of people who have already done it before? So you get that directorship, you get put into a department, now you have that support network to help you put out the idea.

DT: We also have the Startup Fund, so when you have that new idea, that passion, we'll have an allotted set of money to help you with it. It's an open application, so you can either apply in the spring with the traditional application process or during the school year. We're thinking a lot about the freshmen and sophomores that maybe didn't get a chance to get involved. So what we're saying is, if you've got an idea in October and you missed the deadline, you don't have to wait. Apply now, and if it's a good enough cause and it's a good enough idea we'll take you on right away. A common student grievance is that a student will meet with a faculty member and pitch a new idea, but the common response is, "You find the money and I will fully support you." This gives them a forum where that financing is readily available.

CS: One of our really big things is a program called Let's Talk. Something that came up in conversations with students and other student leaders is that there are a lot of things that get discussed in small groups, like in residence halls, and there are a lot of RSOs set up to discuss certain issues, but there's no public forum where students can say, "This is my view on this controversial topic, and I want to discuss this." How we envision the program happening: we use O'Neill Plaza in something similar to Take Back the Night. What we like about that is that students are able to openly talk about their experiences, and they're talking to Boston College with Gasson in the background and the BC student body looking on. What we say is, let's apply that to other issues: race, gender, GLBTQ, sexual health, class issues, any controversial issue that BC feels they want to talk about. We'll give them that platform. We would choose a varied set of speakers.

DT: It would be an intense selection process. We want to present a diverse set of speakers that would be checked for their logical argument in terms of their validity, but still present a diverse view of experiences and present them in an open forum to spark discussion. It really is about getting BC students comfortable in addressing these issues and advancing the intellectual and student life at the same time. It's all intertwined. The benefit of this program is that because it would be so public, it promotes student action. Not to mention, Conor and I would be there, members of UGBC would be there. It presents an open forum where we can actually come up with a resolution of what the common student experience is from an ongoing dialogue and see if UGBC can actively work to propose an on campus solution.

CS: From what we've seen, the best way to get anything done on this campus is to just keep talking about it. And it would start with the students.

DT: There's not reason to hide your passion or your well thought-out opinion on a matter. We're in a Jesuit Catholic environment that values conversation, diversity, and openness. And it's about time that we really bring that to the next level and really align with the mission and values of BC. We have a wealth of common student desires that have been articulated every year. The difference this year is that Conor and I truly do believe we'll get them done once and for all because we mix the best of both worlds of experience: programs, and policy and administration. You've got the normal student grievances of print stations on Upper and Lower, study abroad issues of evaluation similar to PEPs style, expanding BC to Boston programs to include the Cape and the Berkshires, increased transparency. Let's have an annual report each year to show how every single penny [of UGBC money] was spent. UGBC publishes a budget that doesn't show where every single dollar goes.

The Heights:Why did you decide to run?

DT: Conor and I have been very involved since day one here on BC's campus. We both kind of took very broad and diverse paths for involvement on campus. Conor did a lot of stuff with programs. Two of the programs that have seen the most growth, BC Talks and BC Splash, Conor was a founding director of. He started working on those during freshman year with great success, and when they were implemented sophomore year they continued to grow. It's continual growth each and every year. With UGBC, programming is a key part of their operations. I think you've really got to look for somebody that has intensive programming experience. Conor has experience and a very fundamental knowledge because he started up two unique programs with a lot of success.

CS: We've been friends since freshman year. I think we developed just a great working relationship and have really seen each other grow as leaders. I've definitely been more involved in programming, where Dan has worked a lot on The Heights, and I think that's really given him some great experience. He's able to really understand the policies and the pulse of the administration side of things, which I think is really important in that he's already developed a positive working relationship and gained trust with administrators already. We follow the issues on campus—that's going to be the most crucial issue for any candidate that's running, and we already have a start on that and built a relationship.

DT: I think that speaks for our diverse involvement and our broad perspective. That's really where our platform comes from. We took two totally different outlooks—Conor with programs and myself with policy and administration—and we then fully invested in those for the past two and a half years. We have deep, intimate knowledge of all of those areas, and because of those two different avenues, we get this broad and really accurate pulse of the student body. We understand their common desires, what they want, and what they want to achieve. Our platform really represents that. We've gone through this platform many times.

The Heights:What are your plans for the campaign itself?

CS: One thing that we've been doing this entire time is having a grassroots campaign. We believe that the most important thing is talking to the student body. We've been doing a lot of dorm walks saying, these are our ideas, what do you have? We've been adding to our platform this entire time. I think the thing is we're not set in our ideas at all. We've got a wide variety of experience, but we want to know what the students want.

DT: Like Conor mentioned, it's grassroots, face-to-face, peer-to-peer interaction. Conor and I spent the last two and a half years actively listening and responding effectively. We're taking the same strategy to our campaign. We've been listening to student concerns and we've been responding to them every single night, and I think from the amount of student response we have, it echoes that students are ready to finally have a responsive student government.

CS: I think as an example, I met with someone today that was really into sustainability issues. Before this I wasn't really sure of how sustainability worked on campus. She was telling me that one of the biggest things was awareness. And after talking to her I said, let's put more sustainability initiatives on our platform. We're doing a lot of those conversations.

The Heights:Is there anything else you'd like to add?

DT: There is no limit to student innovation in our platform. Our platform completely revolves around student empowerment and what they want to accomplish here at BC. There is zero reason why they shouldn't be able to accomplish their dreams as long as they're in alignment with the university mission. College is about the time of personal development and advancement, and in order to do that you have to be deeply involved and interactive and have a diverse set of experiences that truly help you grow as an individual. Our platform embodies that. We say it all the time: "We are BC." I think for too long it's just been a saying and not an action. Our platform really makes that into an action. We are BC, we're united, we're one, we're going to take this university to the next level.