Chris Langer

With a total of 58.39 percent of the vote, the new Student Government (SG) President and Vice President, Phil Amsler and Greg Pollock, won the SG elections by a landslide. No wonder, then, that they had such an air of confidence about them as the interview began. A pair of firm handshakes and a few jokes later, and Amsler and Pollock were sharing their accomplishments and plans for SG.

“I started out in the residence halls and made a lot of changes there, like rollover debit and new lounge furniture,” said Amsler, a fourth year Mechanical Engineering major and former Residence Hall Association President. “It’s just simple things like that that are going to make things better for all of the residence hall students here, and I really wanted to extend that to the rest of the campus.”

Running mate Greg Pollock, a third year Professional Technical Communications major and former president of the NTID Student Congress (NSC), had similar motivations. “For me, after all the time working with SG and working with the campus, I would see things and hear things from students about how they would really like to improve a lot of small things; and I thought to myself, ‘we could really change something and have an impact.’”

Amsler went on to explain that the motivation to run together came from their similar pasts. “Coming from two major student organizations here on campus, after being presidents of both of them, we realized that we had these major constituents, that we’ve proven ourselves to them, and, you know what, we might have a shot at SG; let’s just go for it. We’re definitely both on the visionary side.”

And that vision is the motivating force behind the goals that Amsler and Pollock have assembled for themselves. “There were a lot of goals that SG has been promising for some time, and they were not being done, so we felt that there were a lot of things that we could put more pressure on and get more of a time commitment to finish those goals and get them off the table,” said Pollock.

The first of these goals, Amsler explained, is his current pet project, Tiger Laundry. His plan is to implement a new system that would allow students to check on the status of laundry rooms online. Through the system, students would be able to see how many washers and dryers are open at a given time, as well as how much time is left on the laundry that they are doing. “It’s going to be on display at Imagine RIT... and one of my big goals for the summer is actually implementing it. It’s a lofty goal, but I think we can have an implementation plan so that they’re all online by fall,” said Amsler.

But that’s just one of the objectives Amsler and Pollock have set for themselves. Between their campaign posters and Facebook group, the duo have pledged to take on issues with academics, the residence halls, NTID, and with RIT’s various web resources and the events that RIT hosts throughout the year. Notable on the list is a proposed softening of RIT’s alcohol policy that would expand the areas where students 21 and older could drink, effectively making RIT barbecues and tailgating parties more sociable. Also on the agenda are changes to the MyCourses system, including a proposal to make its use a requirement for professors seeking tenure. They also want to increase the amount of time RIT Gmail accounts can be kept after graduation to two years.

“It’s important to show the students that we’re committed to making students part of SG. To make them feel like they have a role is important, and part of that means making sure that SG is as visible as possible to all students,” explained Pollock.