City on a Hill Press is dedicated to informing students about the spring campus elections and as a part of this effort, we are profiling the candidates for the Student Union Assembly officer positions. Voting started Wednesday, May 13th and continues through this Wednesday, May 20th. Vote online at http://www.elections.ucsc.edu.

Second-year Porter student Timothy Lindvall II is running for the SUA Chair position. While he was growing up in San Diego, California and Lindvall began his strive for community involvement in fourth grade when he ran for his elementary school’s Associated Student Body president. Through high school, he became actively involved in Youth and Government and currently serves UC Santa Cruz as chair of Porter Senate and as a Porter representative for the SUA. Tim is studying to be a computer science major and currently works for City on a Hill Press as the webmaster.

CHP: What issues are you concerned about and how do you plan to address them?

I’ve outlined a bunch of them in my platform which is available online at www.timforchair.com. To be a little more specific there, the seven points I’ve outlined is structure for the SUA, helping to do a lot more for the community by fixing some of its inefficiencies, community involvement advocacy and improving university and student relations.

Another thing I want to do is help create the link between helping people get to college and once they’re in college, helping them get that link to life after college. College isn’t just an education, it’s a journey that prepares us for the rest of our lives, so it’s really something crucial in providing that link and that grounding for us to really make a difference in the world.

Another one is sustainability. UCSC does a lot of great things already in terms of sustainability and I think that’s something we need to keep pressing further on. One of the presentations I gave earlier this year was about reducing plastic bag use on campus, so I’d love to look into doing stuff like that.

I’d also like to look into a compost program and other green programs. One thing that was brought up to me recently was leaf blowers on campus. A woman came to visit my website and she posted something on my wall saying that she wanted me to look into leaf blowers and I looked it up and it turns out they burn through a lot of gas every year and throw a lot of pollutants into the air, so that’s something I’d like to look into.

Finally my slogan: “We are one, we are all.” Every voice is unique and special, contributing to the greater good of the community. We should never silence a voice because of who they are or because their viewpoint may differ from ours. I believe in making sure, regardless of what your viewpoint is or who you are, that your voice is heard. I believe that by working together through the power of each individual we can do a lot of good for not only our community, but the Santa cruz community and the world.

CHP: What projects have you worked on?

At Porter we’ve been working on a couple of infra-structural changes in terms of funding and financing. We recently initiated a couple bylaws into our Constitution that would add accountability over funding requests and we also reformed Creative and Innovative funding. We request it earlier in the quarter so that people can get going on their projects earlier.

Within SUA, I’ve introduced a couple of bills. One resolution was to create documentation stands for the SUA. Unfortunately in the past years SUA has been lacking in its documentation of its proceedings. As the student government we should have those standards in place. We should know what our governing documents are.

I introduced a bill that would require every year an assembly journal and an assembly ledger. The assembly journal would have all our minutes, all our roll calls, and all our fund requests packed into one little book. The ledger would be all our financial records packed into a book. One copy would stay in the SUA office and one would go to McHenry for public perusal.

That way, not only does the SUA have the documentation, but the public has the documentation too because ultimately it comes down to serving for the public good, so the public should know what we’re doing year-in and year-out.

I also proposed that we reduce plastic bag usage on campus. The points I hit on with that were reusable bag subsidy for students so that they could by a reusable bag for like 50 cents that they could use throughout the year. I also looked into having by Fall 2010 all plastic bags on campus be switched to compostable bags. And finally looking into a plastic bag recycling program.

The idea is that we are not only reducing our plastic bag use, but any use of plastic bags we have already gets put back into the resource market through recycling. Unfortunately that did not pass in the SUA in terms of what the SUA wanted to focus on. It’s still something that I want to focus on, though, and I’m still looking into how to go about introducing those in the SUA and the general public, possibly in collaboration with the Student Environmental Council and the UCSC Physical Plant.

CHP: How to you plan to address disconnect between the school and SUA?

I really believe in being open. One of my biggest focuses is making sure that campus members know that SUA is there to hear them and be there for them. I feel that in the past, and even sometimes this year, people feel intimidated to talk to the SUA because they may have a different opinion from what the standard opinion is.

I want to fix that. I want people to feel comfortable regardless of their opinions to either come and talk to me as chair or come to the SUA meetings and talk there. The point is making sure that they are empowered to have their voice heard. I’m also a strong believer of, even if you only have a few hours to spare every day, or not even that, even just a few minutes every day, you should be able to get involved with your government.

I’d love to look into public relations and web strategy so that even if you can’t become an SUA representative because of other responsibilities, which I know a lot of students have a lot of responsibilities on their plate, I know I do, that you can still keep up with what’s going on in the SUA.

I’d like to make it as easy as possible to make a comment on what is going on be heard. That’s one thing I’m doing on my website. All my blogs have a comment box and my “Your Opinions” page has a comment box. I even have a little chat box on my website where people can instant message me directly, assuming I’m in front of my computer at the time. I really want to hear these voices. I really want to hear what these people have to say, even if it’s a dissenting opinion. Every voice deserves the right to be heard.

CHP: Anything else you’d like to say?

I am the underdog. I am the little mouse in the corner coming into this election. The other candidates have a huge following behind them. I am reaching out to those that feel that student government hasn’t been listening to them.

I really encourage them to consider me as their candidate—someone who will take every voice and value it on this campus. I encourage people if they have anything they’d like to say to me to leave me a comment.

Links:
Tim Lindvall for SUA Chair [Tim Lindvall, Facebook]

Elections Guide: Spring 2009 [City on a Hill Press]

UC Santa Cruz Student Union Assembly [SUA]