2 tickets vie to lead dorms

Walking down the street to class, students might have noticed sidewalks chalked with promotions and flyers for one or both of the tickets campaigning for the Residence Hall Association elections. RHA is the student government body for the approximately 9,000 students who live in the residence halls. RHA is holding its elections for the 2006-2007 officers Wednesday, and the two running tickets -- Griffin and Spark -- have been advertising around campus.\nStudents have the opportunity to cast their votes Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.. Tables will be set up in each residence hall center, and students can vote for their center executives and the RHA executives.\nBoth tickets have their own vision of what needs to be done to make RHA better in the coming years. Griffin's campaign is focused on the idea that humor is an essential part of leading. The ticket's name, Griffin, comes from the TV show "Family Guy" and is symbolic of this idea of humor, said Matt Jarson, the Griffin ticket's presidential candidate.\n"With humor, we want to pull together administrators and pull together students as well," Jarson said. \nThe Spark ticket, however, is focused on increasing communication. \n"We want the concerns and ideas of each and every student to be heard," said Ryan Goodwin, Spark's candidate for vice president of internal affairs. \nWhile the two campaigns vary in many ideas, there is some common ground. Each group has plans to begin a newsletter to keep students informed of what is going on within RHA. They also each have plans to organize a yearly RHA event to make the organization more well-known.\n"The Student Foundation has Little 500," said Sarah Clark, Griffin's candidate for vice president of student affairs. "If we can make a campus-wide event, we can really bring RHA's name out." \nThe Spark ticket said the problem in the current RHA programming is a lack of \nfrequency.\n"I plan to have monthly programs and there needs to be a large signature event," said Meg Palm, Spark's candidate for vice president of programming. \nThe Spark platform also includes plans to increase its presence on campus during Welcome Week to be more visible to incoming freshmen. Anthony Smith, Spark's candidate for president, is a freshman, which he says will be an asset.\n"I'm only a freshman, so I know the freshmen mindset," he said. \nSpark also has plans for a form on the RHA Web site where students can voice their concerns, Goodwin said.\n"I'm personally committed to meeting with those people," he said. \nGriffin has a different approach to handling student opinions. It plans to hold monthly forums to meet in different residence halls where students can go to voice their concerns, Jarson said.\n"We want to try to get students to sit down and talk to us as much as possible," he said. \nThe Griffin ticket also has plans to use online surveys as another method of receiving student feedback, Clark said.\n"We realize not all students want to go to a meeting," she said. "This is another way for students to really express what they want to say." \nAside from the two RHA tickets, students will also have the chance to vote to approve a new referendum to the RHA constitution. The current RHA structure has been in effect for more than 40 years, and the current administration decided changes needed to be made, said Adam Wiszowaty, vice president of programming for RHA. After meeting with various residence hall administrators, advisers and student leaders, a new constitution was drafted and approved at the last presidents' council meeting, Wiszowaty said. \nThe new constitution allows for increased representation from the residence centers at the RHA level on the general assembly (which is currently known at the presidents' council) and a new funding board to streamline the funding process from the residence halls, Wiszowaty said.\n"This funding board will keep more of the residence hall student activity fee within the residence halls and it will encourage more collaborative programming with other student organizations," Wiszowaty said.\nThe new referendum to the constitution will require a two-thirds vote to pass.