By Elizabeth Guiten
Staff Writer
With Student Government Association elections now finished, Pepperdine welcomes its new Executive Board for the 2004-2005 school year. It will consist of Carl Kasalek as SGA president, Misty Day as vice president, Elizabeth Isabella as secretary and Manuel Mihalas as treasurer.
Kasalek said he considers himself to be a very goal-driven person and expects that trend to continue next year.
“The Pepperdine community should expect great feats from the upcoming SGA,” Kasalek said. “The group that has been elected thus far is a very talented group with even more room for growth.”
Kasalek also touched on what sets him and the rest of the newly elected E-Board apart from others.
“One element that may set us apart from the past Executive Boards of SGA is that before ever being elected we considered ourselves to be a team,” he said. “I see this team element driving everything we do this coming year.”
Goals he said he wants to accomplish for next year include a plan to make an online comments and ideas submission form on the SGA Web site. He said how he wanted to establish better connections with local businesses to foster corporate sponsorship for activities.
Kasalek wants to place students on committees that make “upper decisions” at Pepperdine. As SGA becomes more policy driven, Kasalek said he wants to work closely with members of the administration to gain a permanent or rotating seat on the committees that form and shape policy on campus to add a student perspective to what goes on and is decided.
Other goals that he mentioned included reopening the road behind the Firestone Fieldhouse and redesigning the shuttle system along with establishing an “on campus” drop off and pick up system for dry cleaning services. He also discussed a shuttle to take students from campus to the beaches so that they would not have to deal with the hassle of parking. He said he was also in support of projects that the current SGA had started and vowed to continue them. He said projects included putting a convenience store in the back of Rho parking lot, instituting a global point system and adding stairs between lower and upper dorm road and the corner of Towers.
Vice-President-elect Day said she wants to work with the current SGA in dealing with administrators and clubs on ways to improve the structure and role of Inner Club Council. “Being involved with ICC for a year has really shown me what it is about and how it works currently,” Day said. “I also hope to do many things for the students like trying to get wireless Internet in the living areas, re-establishing SafeRides, and getting shuttles that will bring students to their respective living areas during the day. I think that these three things are important because they affect students’ day to day lives.”
Treasurer-elect Mihalas said his goals include making sure all fiscal decisions are made in a responsible manner so that there are no hitches during event planning and financing. He also said he wants to increase the value of the student I.D. card by either creating or renewing partnerships with several Malibu and L.A. County businesses, and being able to use the card as money at these establishments.
He also wants to expand revenue sources for SGA through on-campus corporate advertising in places such as the student calendar and work with the student body and administration to pursue the goal of implementing a self contained on-campus carwash for student use.
Students also elected class presidents and class senators.
For the senior class Ryan Breedyk was elected as president with Jessica Eisenreich, Kevin Koehler, Jonathan Miller, Melissa Overbeck and Lauren Powojski elected as senators. Junior class President-elect Leon Dixson is joined by Jennifer Akamine, Eric Burns, Brooke Coates, Paula Perrone, Robert Romero, Jonathan Mohan and Cosima Luther as senators. The sophomore class elected Christine Yi as their president along with Amy Dyer, Foster Driver, Kristin Compean, Erin Bundra and Jin Cai as senators.
Voter turnout this election was 933 votes overall with 28.5 percent of the votes coming from the freshman class, 33.2 percent from the sophomores, 32.4 percent from the juniors and 28.6 percent from the senior class.
Submitted March 25, 2004