Jason Levy: Looking back at a year of accomplishment

The Undergraduate Assembly is effective.

Given the criticism that we've received in the past, this statement may seem bold.

Yet given the unparalleled success that we've achieved this year, a bold statement regarding the UA's effectiveness is nothing more than a given fact.

At the beginning of this year, UA members made a pact that their work on every project would not end after the body passes a proposal. It would not end when The Daily Pennsylvanian writes an article about it. Their work even would not end when a member faces barriers within the University. Rather, each member pledged to work tirelessly on their projects until they were implemented. Such a mantra resulted in real, tangible results for the student body.

Never before have so many of our initiatives reached fruition. Our call for the expansion of preorientation programs led to the expansion of PENNacle and created the groundwork for long-term expansion of both PENNacle and PennQuest. As you can read in today's DP, seven months of work to implement a UA and UA-Steering proposal has led to a radically improved New Student Orientation. Additionally, we have worked with the administration to set up a path for the creation of an opt-in online facebook. In collaboration with the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, the Student Activities Council and a group of dedicated students, we brought back the Penn Course Review. Among our many other accomplishments, we successfully worked to bring smoke-free college housing, later hours for food trucks, late-night dining options and easier access to condoms at CVS.

In fact, of all the projects brought before the UA this year, only three have yet to be implemented -- proposals for coed college housing, final exam schedule reform and centralized freshman housing. Each of these projects requires significant long-term change and will not be forgotten by next year's body.

While our accomplishments are noteworthy, the process of reaching these achievements is significant as well. We have created positive, working relationships with all other constituent groups on campus, including the graduate student leadership, the faculty, the University Board of Trustees and a wide array of administrators. Never before has a UA worked with so many other constituent groups and organizations. This communication builds the solid infrastructure that all leaders within our community need to make positive changes at Penn.

Most significantly, we have revolutionized our relationship with undergraduate constituency groups. Through a recharged UA-Steering, umbrella organizations ranging from the United Minorities Council to the Panhellenic Council now have significant opportunities to shape and influence our agenda. With UA-Steering discussing every major proposal that our body works on, we have taken great strides to ensure that elected representatives of every major umbrella organization on Penn's campus have the opportunity to tell us if our proposals are in line with their goals. Likewise, when this body supports our proposals, we present a stronger voice to the administration, for we are able to say that we speak for not only 33 elected representatives, but also every major undergraduate constituency group on Penn's campus.

This revitalization of UA-Steering has been a main thrust of our effort to improve our accountability to the student body. Additionally, with this goal in mind, this year, more than ever before, results of surveys of undergraduates have fueled our policies. Most notably, the voice of over 1,000 undergraduate respondents directly influenced our calls for smoke-free college houses and freshman-centralized housing.

With these efforts, we have made great strides in improving our accountability, yet our work is not done. This year we laid the groundwork to empower individual undergraduates to change University policy. We brought back UA town hall meetings, began a program of UA meetings across campus and created open forums at the beginning of every meeting where any student can come voice his or her concerns and opinions. With UA-driven and administration-supported reforms to University Council over the last two years, we successfully lobbied to create open forum sessions at the end of every Council meeting.

During these sessions, any undergraduate with issues appropriate for the council will have the opportunity to directly relay their concerns or advice to top administrators, such as the president and the provost. These systems are in place, and next year's UA will continue to show all undergraduates the advantages of using them.

I must admit that it is with sadness that I leave a body that I have loved over the course of my four years at Penn. Yet I leave it with the confidence that next year's body will build on our success. With the most talented group of leaders I have ever seen entering next year's body, I assure you that the best is yet to come. Jason Levy is a senior in the College and the chairman of the Undergraduate Assembly.

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