This is a modified version of a speech given at the Opening Convocation

Allow me to introduce this year's executive board for MCSG. We are Edward Donkor, Damion Rhudd, Fa'autu Talapusi, Cate McDonough, Minguel Nieto and myself.

Our goal for MCSG is Effective Student Representation.

For student representation at Mac to be effective, it must be considered a process in its own right. A process by which the larger student body is consulted before any of the student governance structures at Macalester make any decisions that affect students' lives. A process by which students are given feedback about how their suggestions are being implemented, or why they could not be implemented.

In other words, for Effective Student Representation to be a reality, there must exist clear lines of communication between the students and the structures that govern their college life.

Our goal is to facilitate and maintain this conversation. Here's how we plan on achieving this:

First, we will work to ensure that the students we appoint to Macalester's many policy-making committees feel prepared to effectively represent the views of Macalester's incredibly diverse student body. By having regular meetings with these representatives, we will determine what information they need to do their jobs, and we will do our best to provide this information by gathering it from the larger student body.

Second, we ourselves will be asking students what they want from us, before we make any decisions about MCSG's goals. For that is how we prepared our agenda for the coming year—by asking last years student body. And we found that:

1) Students want the administration to continue to address the State of Multiculturalism at Macalester. We will continue to work with students, the faculty, and especially the new Dean of Multicultural Life's Office, to see how Macalester's model of Multiculturalism can be improved, especially regarding issues of the recruitment and retention of domestic students of color.

2) Students want a student-run recreational space at Macalester. This year's new student orientation logo rightly stressed that Macalester's strength lies in its community. Having one student-run space, which all students feel they own, will undeniably strengthen the students' community, and especially allow off-campus students to be more invested in campus-life. This year, we plan on giving $10,000 dollars out of our capital fund towards this effort. We plan on fundraising for the rest of the required funds. Most importantly, we plan on surveying the student body so that they, and only they, can decide what their space should look like.

3) Students must be more involved in Macalester's tenure process. As President McPherson has often stated, the decision of which professors to grant tenure to is the most important one the college makes every year. It is essential that students have enough of a say in these decisions. So this year we will work to educate students about how this process works, and will investigate means by which students can be more invested in it.

This is surely an ambitious agenda. But my colleagues and I are prepared to follow it through. Make no mistake, we are doing this because we love the college and want to see it be successful. We are aware that this will be a challenging year for Macalester and that tough budgetary choices will need to be made as a result. We will do our best to effectively represent student's views on what these choices should be. We are prepared to do whatever is in our power to ensure that effective student representation becomes a reality, because it will strengthen our community. Only with a strong sense of community can Macalester face the current budgetary and other challenges and still meet its goals with excellence.

But all our efforts will be useless without your involvement.

So faculty and staff members, we need your advice and support. You have our assurance that our agenda will always be constructive.

Finally, and most importantly, students, we need you to be involved. You must. For without your input, without your support, MCSG is reduced to a joke. So I am going to make a few requests:

Run for Legislative Body. Elections on September 20.

Apply to be a student-representative on Macalester's decision-making committees. Pick up an application from the MCSG office.

The MCSG suggestion box will remain next to the Campus Center Information Desk. If you have any ideas, drop them in the box.

Visit us at our office upstairs in the Campus Center.

Fill out our surveys, read our announcement, attend our forums. You can expect that we will make it as easy as is possible for you to do so. You can expect that we will be asking you to do so repeatedly.

This is your college, so make it what you want it to be.