As fall semester begins, the student body president, vice president and secretary share some of their first steps in fulfilling their campaign promises to the community.

Secretary Katherine Ladner said one of the first things put in place by the new executives is a value statement and “something to keep in mind as [first-years] go through college.”

President Ramon Trespalacios shared the following that will be circulated and implemented among the newest students to join the university.

“I, as a citizen of the SMU Community, commit myself to upholding the values of intellectual integrity, academic honesty, personal responsibility and sincere regard and respect to all SMU students, faculty and staff,” Trespalacios said.

The theme of “community” is clearly the common thread for all three Student Body representatives’ goals for the 2013-2014 academic year, and one that Trespalacios insists needs to be revisited by the student body as a whole.

“It seems some SMU students have forgotten that they all have something in common,” Trespalacios said. “Even though they are involved in various organizations, have different majors or reside in different areas, above all they are Mustangs.”

Trespalacios stressed the importance of the community working actively and honestly in identifying problems and implementing solutions through all facets available – specifically, students voicing their opinions themselves.

“Student Senate is purposeless if the student body does not participate in our endeavors,” Trespalacios explained.

“Students are going to be able to use the hashtag #fixitsenate on Twitter and Facebook to express things they would like to see changing,” Trespalacios said. “We want and need issues they see on campus; what they want to be fixed.”

Building this type of accountability system that actively supports and helps the community will require support not only from students and faculty, but also within the senate itself.

Vice President Jaywin Malhi said that while Student Senate has “been able to really crack student concerns over the years,” he and his fellow representatives would “like to enhance that even more” by working more directly with the individual senators representing the various schools within the university.

“Each of our individual senators have what they want to accomplish as well, and they need to be able to draw on the experience we wield in the executive committee to be able to accomplish what they want,” Malhi said.

Ladner echoed these plans for working with senators to identify what they want to accomplish and how to make it happen.

“[Jaywin and I] will sit down with every senator and chair and see where they’re at,” Ladner said.

Another key aspect to accomplishing this is by trying “to build social capital on this campus,” according to Malhi. Noting “some bias-motivated, hate-motivated issues on [SMU] campus” in recent years, Malhi emphasized the benefit of
cross-organizational collaboration.

“If two organizations who have historically not intermingled put on an event together,” Malhi said, “I think they deserve more money than they request.”