Fellow students,

I would like to start off by thanking you for giving me the opportunity to serve this community and its students for the past year and a half. It has been an experience that I have greatly enjoyed and learned from. Starting with First Year Council last fall, and then moving into the Student Senate last spring, I have enjoyed the opportunity to contribute to the Capstone in a variety of meaningful ways.

This year, I rewrote the code of laws to streamline the process for student organizations to gain university funding from the financial affairs committee. While serving as a senate representative on the SGA scholarship committee, I saw the number of scholarships granted double in just one year. These developments were very exciting, as I felt that my work had accomplished meaningful change and tangible actions for our student body, which I see as a great start for what I would like to accomplish if given the opportunity to serve on SGA again this year.

Upon launching my campaign for Vice President of Student Affairs, I had the chance to sit down and meet with quite a few student leaders on campus, and appreciated and shared their optimism for the direction the Capstone is headed. The issues that I see as most pressing and am most excited about tackling would be addressing the increasing cost of living on campus, the stressful nature of course registration for both new and current students, providing campus-based study incentives to help facilitate finals week for students and providing University-sponsored events for all students.

If elected as your vice president, my first goal would be to continue the current trend of expanding the SGA need-based scholarship program. I believe that through more events like SGA date auction, which I had the pleasure of working on this year, we can increase both the amount of money allotted and the number of scholarships given. I have seen the impact these scholarships can have on students’ lives, and my ultimate goal is to let all students feel less financial pressure.

My next goal would be to relieve some of the stress that students feel during course registration. I believe that an easy way to accomplish this would be to work with members of the faculty through an SGA-based committee to establish a syllabus bank that students could use to knowledgeably select classes based on their individual learning needs.

In addition to the stress of course registration, we all know that finals week is one of the hardest weeks of the semester, and I’d like to see SGA try to alleviate some of that difficulty in ways that could impact our entire student body. I think that the best way to do this would be to offer incentives and discounts around campus throughout finals week. This past year, the First Year Council worked with Starbucks to discount the price of coffee during finals week for freshmen. I would like to continue to build upon this success by reaching out to other companies and organizations by building relationships to create incentives for students of all ages.

On March 11, I hope you all will give me the chance to work for you by voting for me in the student government elections because I believe that, together, we can accomplish a great deal toward bettering this university.

Stephen Keller is a candidate for the position of SGA Vice President for Student Affairs.