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In print | Published April 22, 2010

My name is Amelia Mitter-Burke and I would like to be your next Student Council President.
I am running for president as someone that wants to see StuCo continue growing in its relevance, accessibility, power and effectiveness.

I see StuCo as a way of connecting and empowering students so that we can be involved in shaping the present and future of Swarthmore. I am interested in how students can have not only access to, but real involvement with, the administration. While I have ideas about ways to change Swarthmore, my primary interest in the job of president is not in my own agenda, but how it is an important role of coordinating and facilitating the work that students already do by making StuCo a more open and useful channel for student voices.

I am a history/education special major in the class of 2012; I have been on the Student Budget Committee and working in Coalition for a Free Haiti, Swarthmore Labor Action Project, and White Students Confronting Racism; I am active in the Dance Department; I do work study as a garden assistant in the Arboretum.

The guiding idea of my role as president would be accessibility. Our programs should exist to meet students where they are and take their efforts further. From committees like SBC, to academic resources like WAs, to the funds for creating new projects, all the resources of Swarthmore are many angles to get at this core issue of access. Examples of current issues that I see at Swarthmore, and ways for me as president to coordinate work on them are: efforts to increase the diversity within academic support programs (connect the Educational Policy Representative with student groups to support programs as they assess their offerings), making sure students are involved in policy decisions that affect them, especially regarding food, housing, college services, hiring and financial aid (continually advocating student involvement in decisions), and really focusing on the efficiency of StuCo, so that it is capable of making new programs to immediately respond to the daily lives of students (dining services policies, transportation, dorm locks) and figuring out ways to take in student perspectives to consider the complexity of initiatives like StuCo pay, which require thoughtful planning and real efforts to represent the student body. I also appreciate StuCo’s recent initiative to group its work into three areas — outreach, financial issues, and immediate response — and I would be interested in connecting these groups to the broader student body and bringing in student groups already involved in these issues.

I also want Swarthmore to be accessible in a more broad sense than the above important day-to-day channels. I am interested in more long-term efforts to think about our financial aid policy, academic accessibility, faculty diversity, program offerings, admissions policies, and the culture and climate of our school.

I also see next year as an important moment for StuCo as Liz Braun will begin her time as Dean of Students. Attending the dean search sessions this semester was an important experience for me in seeing how students can be involved in college decisions and envisioning different possibilities for the dean of students role. I would like to work with her to organize open events to establish comfortable working relationships, but also more specific meetings that could connect her to different areas of work on the campus.

I have been involved in multiple student activities here on campus, so not only do I feel prepared for the responsibility of StuCo president and to make a substantial time commitment outside of my classes, I have experience with different communities on campus and the different needs they have.
I see substantial importance in committing to the coordination, facilitation, and active work of StuCo and next year I would make it my top priority.

Above all these ideas though, I see the role of president as supporting efforts to get started, coordinating them once they take off, and following them through to realization, and this is the work that excites me.

Please contact me (amitter1) with any feedback and questions.

Amelia Mitter-Burke ’12

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