Ch-ch-changes
Patrick Heery and Pulse could be the answer to student woes
By Jaclyn Lipp, Staff Writer
May 16, 2007 | 11:11 a.m.
As the Pulse presidential candidate for Student Senate, senior Patrick Heery is passionate about putting the emphasis back on students, getting their voices to be heard and bringing substance back to Ohio University educations.
Heery, who is an English and Classics double major, wants to achieve shared governance to make students feel that they have a say and to put the value back into the degree. He is backed by a diverse ticket consisting of people from every corner of campus, such as students of different cultures, the LGBT community, athletes, and environmentalists.
However, Heery himself also has a wide range of experiences to offer to the powerful Student Senate leadership position.
He has served his time on Senate, putting in four years of hard work and helping to bring about significant change. Heery has served as the Academic Affairs Commissioner for the past two years, which is the largest commission on Student Senate. Before that, he served as an intern his freshman year and as East Green Senator his sophomore year. In that time, he has worked closely with the administration, as well as with students.
“The main responsibility and duty of the president is to serve as a representative of Student Senate to the administration: to go toe-to-toe and fight when necessary, but it’s also to sit down and work with the administration. And the fact is of all my candidates, I am the only one who has ever done that ... I’m the only one with hard-set experience to say I can fight when necessary and also work when necessary,” Heery said.
Heery explained that some of his opponents have shown that they can fight the administration, but they haven’t shown that they can work with it as well to get things accomplished.
Heery demonstrated one way he worked with the administration with the creation of the General Fee Governance Council. He is a creator and co-chair of the council, which is the sole recommendation body for the allocation of the general fee of the university. In other words, students weren’t aware of where their tuition was going before, and the council now helps to bring about more transparency of funds and work towards shared governance.
Issues, Issues, Issues
Besides budget transparency and shared governance, Heery strongly supports environmental change. He said this issue is entirely new, and his was the first ticket to call for it. Pulse is working with and is supported by the Green Network. Heery wants to put the focus on meaningful and pro-active change, such as environmentalism, rather than focusing on the negative issues.
Diversity is another area that Heery suggested that he would work on. There is polarization on campus, but there is a great potential to bring students together, rather than to be divisive, Heery said.
On the issue of confidence in McDavis, Heery said he would leave the voice up to students and they should most importantly consider the issues of what he has done and not done. Heery has worked closely with the president and strongly disagrees with his deprioritization of academics, but he applauds his strong commitment to climate change.
Lastly, he wants to work at the core to bring substance back to Ohio University because focus on the image is shallow, Heery said. He sees the recent negativity in the media towards the media as an opportunity for great leadership and growth to occur.
Heery believes he could be a great leader and make change happen as Student Senate president. He pointed out that he respects his opponents, but there is not much evidence of their success to judge if they are going to be able to institute real change.
Instead he offered proof that he and Pulse could. “Look at what we’ve already done -- measure that. Use that to measure the truth of our promises because there are a lot of promises being put out there, and there’s a lot of rhetoric. And anyone can make promises, but not too many people can hold true on those promises and make change happen ... we are the most qualified and the most able to make change a reality,” Heery said.
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Watch out for the rest of our candidate profiles today:
Tim Vonville
Will Klatt
Shane Tilton