Engage
Raven, Myles, & Alex for Executive Slate
engage with us. engage with admin. engage with you.
The ENGAGE Slate doesn’t exist without students. We will leverage our combined SG experience to foster meaningful connections with administrators and students alike. We will build upon the successes of the CARE slate and preserve our revitalized SG culture. If you are a student in need, we will stand up for you. We will relentlessly support you. We will engage with you.
meet the slate
We're focused on helping our community engage. And we’re uniquely qualified to do so. We have a combined 8 years of Student Government experience. We've served on College Council and 5 different SG committees. We will use our knowledge to build bridges and bring your voices directly to administrators.
alex levi
Running for Vice President of Administration is Alex Levi, a third year from Knoxville, TN. He is majoring in Mathematics and will matriculate in the fall as a BA/MA student in the MACSS program (where he will concentrate in Linguistic Anthropology). Alex has engaged as a College Council representative for two years, where he spearheaded the creation of a comprehensive mental health resource book and brought the Wild & Scenic Film Festival to UChicago, both year long projects. He has served on the Community Service Fund and Committee on Campus Sustainability for two/three years respectively.
raven rainey
Running for President of the Student Association is Raven Rainey, a third-year political science major and art history minor from California. She has engaged UChicago through LEADS, The Emergency Fund as Secretary and Vice Chair of the Finance Board, College Council as a representative, and Founder and President of the Society for Social Science and Humanities Majors of Colors. Through the organizations she has been a part of, Raven has brought her passion for helping others and hopes to foster continued engagement with the UChicago community.
myles hudson
Running for Vice President of Student Life is Myles Hudson, a third-year from Atlanta majoring in English and political science. He is the current chair of College Council (CC), with a focus on making CC a more efficient and thoughtful mouthpiece for students. Myles has been elected three times to CC as a Class of 2021 representative and has made first-year cultural sensitivity training his hallmark project. He formerly co-chaired and sat on the Committee on Recognized Student Organizations. He is committed to further engaging with RSOs and top-level administrators to enhance student life and create a more equitable campus culture.
inclusion
UChicago’s relationship with marginalized students is disgraceful. Surface-level engagement isn’t going to cut it. CARE Slate has made groundbreaking efforts to support marginalized students where administrators won’t. We’re committed to actionable policies that will continue their historic work.
We will push for quarterly meetings between cultural RSO leaders and top-level administrators to give you direct opportunities to have your voices heard. We firmly believe that the best student advocacy comes from people on the ground. We want to put you in the same room with the University leaders that matter most to engage with them.
We are overwhelmingly proud of the Emergency Fund (EF) for its persistent devotion to students facing financial hardship. To this end, we pledge a $3,000 donation to the EF at the beginning of Autumn Quarter. We will strengthen our relationship with the EF by cosponsoring fundraisers and encouraging innovative ways to engage with Student Government.
Next year, we plan to introduce a new Committee on Marginalized Student Affairs (COMSA). Inspired by draft legislation from first-year College Council representatives Tyler Okeke and Bianca Simons, COMSA will directly support marginalized student initiatives and engage in substantive conversations about their experiences with the Office of Campus & Student Life. COMSA will also publish an end-of-year report that documents their progress.
Research shows that 8 in 10 sexual assault survivors know the perpetrator. With over 450 RSOs on campus, we want survivors to feel safe among their closest friends. That’s why we intend to make annual in-person sexual misconduct prevention workshops mandatory for all RSOs, and we will withhold funding from groups that don’t comply. We credit College Council representatives Itzel Velázquez (2021) and Summer Long (2023) for investigating this gray area in RSO training. We are also proud to continue uplifting the pioneering work of the Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Committee (SAAP), the Phoenix Survivors Alliance (PSA), and other survivor-oriented RSOs.
UCPD consistently tops the list of challenges faced by Black, brown, and queer students on campus. We’re committed to connecting student organizers with UCPD leadership to foster critical engagement with alternative policing methods. And starting Autumn Quarter 2020, we want UCPD to annually circulate their bias and Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training procedures to students using everyday, accessible language.
sustainability
Our administration pays lip service to sustainability and only that. They maintain just one full time employee in the Office of Sustainability. They have no carbon neutrality commitment. They haven’t published a sustainability report since 2016, and they won’t release their emissions or consumption data to the general public.
As a slate, we hope to engage with the administration by urging them to take sustainability more seriously. We will continue to engage with sustainability focused student organizations and understand how best to empower their success through increased funding and leadership assistance. We’ll empower you to engage by providing opportunities such as the Student Government Committee on Campus Sustainability (CCS), where you can make your unique mark. Together, we can build a greener campus.
Within the past year, the amazing work of the UChicago Environmental Alliance (UCEA) succeeded in negotiating a Green Fund, earmarked by the administration, and passing the Resolution on Transparency & Communication about Resource Use and Environmental Impact on the University of Chicago Campus. Even amidst the COVID-19 disarray, we’re going to try our hardest to ensure the Green Fund stays intact.
health & wellness
As it stands, UChicago is going through a mental health epidemic. If you need someone to talk to, message Lean on Me for support (note: they have not officially endorsed our slate; we simply wish to acknowledge their work). If you are in a crisis situation, please text GO or CONNECT to 741-741 for confidential support from a specialized crisis counselor. There are so many people in your life who love you and care about you. We love you. The primary goal of our health & wellness policies will always be to offer support, love, and hope to people in pain.
Despite their best intentions, the administration and SCS are often out of touch with student needs. SCS is a valuable institution that provides essential help to students every day, but they clearly have a lot of room to grow based on the negative experiences of many students. The mental health town hall this year provided a glimmer of hope because it allowed students and administrators to engage with each other. As a slate, we pledge to host another mental health town hall next winter quarter.
With the opening of the new wellness center next year, we have an opportunity to change the conversation around health and wellness and reduce stigma. Let’s engage in difficult conversations and unlock our mutual vulnerability so we can foster a community of love and support.
Stress culture is taxing on everyone. Health and wellness are intersectional: for marginalized students, it’s even worse. As a slate, we will constantly engage with the ideas behind the The Icarus Project, a support network for those diagnosed with mental illness that advances intersectional social justice, mutual aid, collective healing, and liberation. We encourage you to do the same.
We were enthused to see the creation of the Health & Wellness as an ad-hoc committee this year, as well as the formation of the HEART Coalition, which brought in leaders from multiple Health & Wellness related RSOs. As a slate we will make Health & Wellness a standing committee. We will provide the necessary financial support to continue to engage with the student body, as they have successfully done already.
infrastructure
During our time in Student Government, we have found ourselves bogged down by various rules and bureaucracy that create unnecessary difficulty in governing. To ensure that engagement continues, we will improve our infrastructure to ensure that Student Government runs properly.
We will work with the Center for Leadership & Involvement (CLI), leadership within RSOs, and SGFC to create a more efficient funding pipeline that incorporates improved leadership training and auditing. We will encourage sustainable and inclusive practices among organizations across the entire campus.
We appreciated CARE’s revival of the Executive Committee and hope to engage with our own next year. Following in their footsteps, we commit to appointing a Chair of Communications and Events while expanding the roles of each member on the Executive Committee.
We plan to establish an SG Tech Committee (SGTC), which will focus on ensuring that all SG technologies are functional and polished. We want the SGTC to create voting software that can be used for elections, CC and Assembly voting, and funding outcomes. The SGTC will work with the SG Historian to create an online database of past SG projects that will help keep future platforms pragmatic and original. We hope you can engage with our newly-created SGTC next year.
We will host an SG training day after Autumn Quarter elections and committee appointments to promote internal cohesiveness. This will better equip every member with the necessary means to represent their constituencies and collaborate as a unified government.
We are dedicated to increasing accountability next year. Modeled after Harvard Undergraduate Council's own accountability measures, we will post progress bars on the SG website to track our work on each platform plank and show substantive steps towards our goals.
covid-19 response
The global pandemic has presented unforeseen challenges, traumatized entire populations, and created disproportionate negative impact on vulnerable populations. During these unprecedented times, the University must have a detailed and robust COVID-19 plan for the 2020-21 academic year. This plan needs to ease a transition back to campus in the fall while also preparing for the possibility of extended distance learning.
It is imperative that UChicago’s COVID-19 plan incorporates input from our entire community. The University’s actions will affect every one of UChicago’s 16,455 enrolled students, in addition to thousands of faculty and staff. As a slate, we will spend our summer engaging with you to negotiate this plan with administrators. We understand that this is a live issue, and we are prepared to be adaptable, proactive, and compassionate.
We call on the University to honor its pledge to meet all demonstrated financial need. We want administrators to protect the financial security of student workers. We want timely education about potential unemployment benefits, resources, and alternative means of income. We want continued teletherapy and virtual wellness options for students. We want specialized academic and mental health guidance for first-generation and low-income (FGLI) students. We want consistent, standardized support for faculty and staff in distress. And we want top-level administrators to materially engage with GSU and UChicago Labor Council’s COVID-19 demands.