Standing on the top of the stairs outside the Hall of Languages between two tall speakers, Student Association presidential candidate Hari Iyer gave a guerilla-style speech to the passing student body at 1:50 p.m. Tuesday.

‘It was meant to be kind of a call to action ? kind of like a rallying message to the students, and I’m hoping it did initiate that,’ Iyer said in an interview after his speech.

Iyer, a junior finance, economics and policy studies major, said his speech served as a broad overview of his platform.

Iyer, who is running on a platform of greater financial transparency at Syracuse University, announced several other initiatives, including increasing interaction between SU and the surrounding city, increasing public safety, and having better communication between SA and student organizations when it comes to their funding.

Iyer said he is happy that this is the first contested election for SA president since 2007. Iyer will run against Jon Barnhart, the current SA Student Engagement Committee chair.

‘With all this campaign activity, people are going to vote more; it’s guaranteed. There’s going to be a much higher turnout rate,’ Iyer said. ‘This is a huge step in getting students involved, in making their voices heard.’

A controversial issue that comes up each year is SA’s allocation of funding of student organizations. Iyer said he would increase the student fee so as to benefit those student organizations, and in turn, the students themselves. But, he said there are more pressing financial concerns at stake.

‘I mean, there are students who have lost $2,000 of financial aid and we need to find out why that is happening,’ he said. ‘But SA doesn’t like not being able to give people the money they need, and the organizations aren’t satisfied at all when they get less money than they need to spend.’

In order to satisfy more student organizations, Iyer suggested decreasing allocations toward causes students either don’t agree with or aren’t interested in. He said he wants to put the money in a place that is most consistent with students’ needs, their hopes and their goals.

‘I think you’ll find that $3.5 million invested for a block of land on the Connective Corridor is a much greater problem than SA’s $600,000 student-activity budget,’ he said.

Students at SU are very motivated and very academically concerned, he said. He also said that the utmost concern of the student body, if not financial, is how strong their program is in terms of how much they are learning, and their potential to get a job or get into graduate school.

Iyer said he has asked student organizations to endorse his campaign, but not financially. He said that doing this would conflict with his campaign promises.

‘Based on the ideology of my platform, it wouldn’t be right for me to ask any of them for a financial contribution,’ he said.

He also had some words for his opponent Barnhart. In addition to calling him out for a debate, Iyer touched on what he saw as the overtly political aspects of Barnhart’s platform, including lowering the legal drinking age to 18 and keeping MayFest.

‘There are 13,000 undergraduate students on this campus. We can decide any day we want to have a block party. And I say we have one this Saturday on Euclid (Avenue),’ he said.

However, he said that some of Barnhart’s goals, like increasing public safety and integrating the city with the campus, were positive steps for the university.

wfmcmill@syr.edu

Published on October 20, 2009 at 12:00 pm