Build BU: New Leaders Look to Raise Student Government Profile
Platform called for gender-neutral bathrooms and housing, free textbooks, new MLK monument
The newly elected Student Government Executive Board may be the first comprising entirely students of color: Devin Harvin (CAS’19) (from left), president, Hafzat Akanni (COM’20, CAS’20), executive VP, Hector J. Meneses Jr. (Questrom’19), VP of finance, and Lovie Burleson (CGS’17, CAS’19), VP of internal affairs. Photo by Cydney Scott
- Build BU, an all-students-of-color slate, won the Student Government E-board election lst week
- Ambitious platform: free textbooks, gender-neutral dorms and bathrooms, study of grading
- Goal: enhance Student Government visibility, BU’s sense of community
Free course textbooks, if feasible. Gender-neutral dorms and bathrooms. Opening Mugar Memorial Library 24/7 at least seven days before finals week. Investigating whether grade deflation is a problem at BU. An online list of college scholarships globally that Terriers might tap.
And a larger campus monument to BU’s most famous alum, Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59).
This agenda helped sweep Build BU to victory last week in the election for next year’s Student Government Executive Board. Their platform can be called ambitious with the same understatement as calling the Boston Marathon a sprint.
But an ambitious agenda squares with increasing Student Government’s visibility, and that’s a big goal of Build BU, according to member Devin Harvin (CAS’19). He will begin a one-year term as the board’s student body president after Commencement.
“Student Government has had a consistent problem with establishing its presence,” Harvin says. “That’s what we seek to change. We should be the individuals that help make students feel a part of a community and connected to something bigger than themselves.”
The other new board members are Hafzat Akanni (COM’20, CAS’20), executive vice president, Lovie Burleson (CGS’17, CAS’19), vice president of internal affairs, and Hector J. Meneses Jr. (Questrom’19), vice president of finance.
Build BU defeated the other slate, BUnited, by a vote of 1,212 to 455, says Ria Wang (SAR’21), cochair of the Student Election Commission, which administers voting.
Akanni says they “were expecting pushback” on their platform, “whether it be from the administration or whether it be from students.” That’s fine, she says: “We can’t be Student Government without the students.”
This year’s election drew almost 1,700 votes, 500 more than last year’s, Akanni says, attesting to Build BU’s intensive campaigning. “We’re trying to increase our presence in the lives of students,” she says. “We went and visited over 60 student groups” in the run-up to the election.
Campaigning hard, both in person and through the Student Link, Harvin says, was meant “to get students engaged and involved in Student Government.… We ran on the idea that community cannot survive without investment from the students.”
“At the end of the day, we’re here to serve the students,” says Burleson. “If the students come to us and tell us that they want to go in a different direction [than Build BU’s platform], we wouldn’t be opposed to that. As far as our goals being ambitious…our number-one thing is just getting a seat at the table. We want students present when decisions are being made” at the University.
“It is a large campus,” Meneses says. Boosting visibility is “something that we are definitely willing to tackle next year.”
During campaign appearances, Harvin says, Build BU assured fellow students that “this will not be the last time you see us. As a Student Government, we have to show up for small, medium, and large student groups.”
John Battaglino, Jr. (MET’08, SED’10) assistant dean of students, executive director of Student Activities, and the Student Government advisor, says he’ll help the E-board with funneling their proposals to the appropriate University office. “I am looking forward to working with this engaged group of students,” Battaglino says.
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