I am supporting Bent Cardan for SGA President. Bent Cardan is just the man we need right now. I’ve known Bent since he first came to campus all the way from California three years ago. We lived on the outdoor experience floor together on Marsh Hall. Back then we used to ride our skateboards everywhere, bombing the hills of Burlington and one time even skating the flying diaper of Redstone like a half-pipe. I watched when he joined the Debate Team and I can remember his happiness after coming home from a weekend away having “messed up” another team from Harvard. It’s true that the Debate Team at UVM has some of most intellectually passionate and driven kids around, which is probably why it ranks among the top schools in the country. I’m an R.A. on Redstone and I’m voting for Bent Cardan because I really believe in his approach to campus politics. He wants to make sure that students can have a forum for discussion so he’s made a blog, which is a website that does just that. http://uvmgetsbent.blogspot.com Rather than filling up everyone’s email once a week, he wants to have a feature of the ‘Current Students’ website link to the ‘President’s Blog,’ so that he can present all the relevant information that goes into the weekly email. This way, students can have easy access to what’s going on. It’s also the way he plans to attack noise violations and stopping indiscriminate police patrols of dorms. When students receive a citation for noise, Bent plans on offering advocacy and acting as a liaison to talk to the City of Burlington. Getting students together through a forum is probably the best way of dealing with this problem. The forum will also be a good way of stopping indiscriminate police patrols of dorms so that students are not targeted, but protected. Bent is all about focusing Fogel’s drive to improve and develop our campus in a way that works for the Students. Bent says, “While President Fogel is rapidly expanding our University, it’s important to make sure that the right changes are made.” I don’t think Bent is necessarily against President Fogel, but he is critical and wants to ensure the best. He enjoys the proverb, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” His approach encompasses three broad topics: improving our college experience, making our education more valuable, and improving our community. He is very personable and fun to talk to, and has the skill needed to get us things like more Alumni Donations to the student groups on campus. He wants to open up all entrances/exits to dorms on campus, because locking these doors raises some legit safety concerns. Imagine a female student is fleeing a stalker or an attacker- she races to the first available entrance only to find it locked. That forces her around to the only open entrance, increasing the time the attacker has to catch her. He wants to work to open a bar on campus. Many universities across the country have this. This is in order to avoid student drinking and driving. The round room sometimes is equipped as a bar, and I think it’s not too far out of our reach to get this movement going with Bent’s support and lead. He’s in favor of more meal options than Sodexho provides and hates to see the street vendors go. This means lower meal prices for students. I don’t think it is right that people who have Xbox in the dorms shouldn’t be able to connect to Xbox Live; Bent wants to open the firewall to allow Xbox Live and the like. The way he plans on making our education more valuable is by introducing an honor code that fosters greater trust between educators and students. He wants to support Professors in negotiations with administrators. He thinks that if we offer more to Professors then UVM will retain their best Professors and draw the best from all over the country. When it comes to improving the community, he wants to ensure that UVM is a model employer, and treats all employees and contract employees with the respect that they deserve. When UVM tries to go with the cheapest possible labor, sometimes the job is not done right. We are already $6.6 million over-budget on the new dorms. By contracting workers who are getting a fair deal, the job is done better, using the best materials, so that in the long run the things we build last. He firmly believes in fostering the environmental University and wants to hold UVM to its values, getting more re-usable and recyclable materials in the new student center and fighting to stop so much plastic and Styrofoam based consumption in the eating areas. He supports fair-trade products too. I think it’s time we had an active SGA President in helping achieve the progressive aims that our progressive campus has in mind. On March 8th and 9th, make your vote count-Get Bent in the office so your voice can be heard.