Jon Barnhart starts each of his committee meetings with a YouTube video, what he calls his ‘video of the week.’ He said he knows it drives current Student Association president Larry Seivert crazy, but that’s how he likes to start things.

‘I know we’re all here to work hard, and I know everybody will work hard, but it’s so much easier to work hard when you’re laughing, smiling and having a good time along the way.’

Barnhart, SA’s current Student Engagement Committee chair, describes himself as professionally laid back. And it’s this quality that he thinks would set his administration apart from Seivert’s if he were to be elected SA president.

The junior political science and international relations major was a resident advisor in Shaw Hall his sophomore year. He helped to establish Class Alliance and considered running for president of that community service organization.

But there was no clear defining moment for him. There was no one moment that convinced him he would soon run for president of SA.

There didn’t need to be. Barnhart said he always saw himself holding a leadership role at Syracuse University.

‘It was an accumulation of things. It was realizing that I could build the Student Association around the ideas that are coming from the students. I could build the Student Association around what people are telling me,’ he said. ‘I had to give this a try.

‘It was kind of about last year that I decided, you know, there’s a chance I could do this. Or, there’s a chance I could do this better than Larry.’

Barnhart praised Seivert’s professional, hands-on approach, as well as the increased interest he brought to SA over the year. But Barnhart said he’d run things a little differently.

‘I’m comfortable delegating tasks to people and seeing that they get taken care of in the way that we’re looking to get them taken care of,’ he said.

In developing his platform, which focuses on a broad range of student issues from safety to MayFest, Barnhart hasn’t shied away from lofty goals. He wants to set the stage for lock-in tuition, for example, where what a student pays for tuition freshman year is what they will pay all four years.

In one of his loftiest goals, Barnhart said he wants to start a dialogue among students to help them feel less segregated at SU – something the university is known for both locally and nationally. His platform on inclusion, however, has yet to develop any clear initiatives beyond dialogue.

Starting small is what Barnhart says he’s most concerned with. Friends at other universities have told him there’s no way he can work on inclusion. But he thinks, in the very least, he can work to identify roadblocks students or student groups on campus might face.

The race for SA president is the first contested election in two years. Barnhart will face Hari Iyer, a junior finance, economics and policy studies major, in the elections, which begin Monday.

Barnhart said he likes that the competition has engaged students. The competition, he said, helps each candidate develop their platform, and it gets students out to vote.

‘If at the end of the day we were to stalemate in this election, but 50 percent of the student body turned out to vote, I would be thrilled,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ll see another election for a long time where there’s not a competition for president, and I think that’s amazing.’

Despite his enthusiasm for a contested race, Barnhart said he doesn’t feel his opponent, Iyer, really knows how SA works.

‘I feel like people within SA know how SA works, and they expect their leader to know how SA works.’

He said Iyer has given SA, as well as university administrators, a bad rap because of his plans for a student protest two weeks ago on Euclid Avenue after SU announced classes would be reinstated on SU Showcase, more commonly known as MayFest. Students spoke for themselves when no one showed up, Barnhart said.

He found flaw in Iyer’s ‘protest first’ method to working with administration.

Barnhart, who said he holds his relationship with university administrators ‘close to heart,’ said he’s willing to speak out when appropriate.

Barnhart recalled an SU Alumni Association meeting earlier in the year where plans for a new student bookstore and a new visitors center in Crouse-Hinds Hall were discussed. At that meeting, he was the lone voice against 40 or more board members.

‘I was furious. I told them, ‘I have friends that couldn’t make it back to SU. I know students that can barely afford to be here at SU. And then you guys are willing to just throw all this money at a visitors center?”

He said his willingness to speak out about student issues will help him hold the university accountable.

‘I’m okay being the bad guy when I’m advocating on behalf of the students. As SA president, that’s your role; sometimes you have to be the bad guy. And by bad guy, I mean maybe going against what the administration thinks is the best plan of action.’

Her freshman year, Katie Lewinski lived on Mount Olympus with Barnhart. On his way out one night, Barnhart mass text-messaged his entire floor to ask if anybody needed anything since he was heading to CVS.

‘That’s something that most people wouldn’t do. That’s just the way Jon is. He’s just so helpful and so kind that you almost – you don’t believe that he’s that sincere. But that’s just the way he is,’ she said.

Lewinski, a junior international relations and policy studies major, has helped Barnhart with his campaign since he first mentioned he would run for SA president in mid-October. She manages his Facebook and Twitter accounts by posting information about his campaign events, and as an assembly representative from the College of Arts and Sciences, she has witnessed his work ethic at weekly SA meetings.

‘When you work with Jon, you demand so much more of yourself because you see how hard he works and how tireless he is,’ Lewinski said. ‘He always has a smile on his face. He’s always willing to go that extra mile to do whatever he needs. He has a very clear plan of what he wants to get accomplished as president that I don’t think the other candidate has.’

If Barnhart were to take office in January, he said among the first things he would do is build up student presence on University Senate’s finance committee to push for his tuition initiatives. For right now, he will continue talking with students to hear what their main concerns are.

‘It’s just phenomenal to see when you sit down with a student and say, ‘So, what’s on your mind and how do you feel about this?’ how willing they are to just open up and say, ‘Oh my gosh, well since you asked I happen to feel this, this and this,” Barnhart said. ‘And they’ve got this laundry list of issues they’ve been waiting to complain to somebody about. It’s just been a blast.’

blbump@syr.edu

Published on November 8, 2009 at 12:00 pm