Our vision is simple: build bridges across campus to create meaningful action. As the only team with previous USG experience, we will be able to effectively cultivate cross-campus engagement and substantially collaborate with the DU administration. After seeking input from various student groups throughout the DU Community for the last several weeks, we have identified four pillars to our platform: Sprit, Student Life & Administration, Alcohol Safety and Campus Safety, and Sexual Assault

 

Spirit

We believe DU has made significant strides in improving school spirit, but that in order to cultivate the Pioneer Spirit students desire, DU needs to continue to rally around the shared experiences that make being a student here exciting and fun. This isn’t limited to athletics - we would like to see students from many facets of campus connecting and plugging in to campus happenings beyond their own student groups and identities. In order to improve school spirit, we will:

• Provide students free hockey tickets through a Student Life buyback of the student section

• Increase funds to the spirit committee for continued spirit cart days, giveaways, tailgates, and other preparatory spirit events for athletic and other events

• Improve USG’s social media presence, so students can access the exciting events around campus

• Improve spirit via increased accessibility between USG and students through many means, including Coffee with Cam and Jess every single week

 

Student Life & Administration

We believe that increasing the amount of contact between students groups and the administration is crucial to rebuilding the trust that has been lost. The University of Denver is not only a better school when administrators hear students’ voice, but it is also a safer place when students can trust their administrators. In order to achieve a better relationship between students and administration, we will:

• Collaborate with DUPB, Athletics and the Clarion to create a streamlined calendar app for DU, where students will be able to have centralized mobile access to all of DU’s athletics, DUPB, and student organization activities for that week. This will address the concern we have heard from every single student group and student we have met with: that students want to plug in to other parts of DU, but lack the meaningful communication about other happenings at DU to do so.

• Conduct a roundtable of Greek Presidents, USG and Administration twice a quarter

• Commit to, whenever possible, bring other USG Senators and Executive Board members and students who are not USG members to meetings with administration. The fact that the USG President and Vice President are selected to represent the student body should never preclude other student voices from having a legitimate role at the table.

• Prioritize the drive for the new Student Center and empower more students by engaging them in this project

 

Alcohol Safety and Campus Safety

We believe the solutions surrounding these two areas depend on trust - trust between the administration and Student Body, as well as trust between Campus Safety and the Student Body. We therefore seek to bridge chasms separating these stakeholders, with a new student liaison position on USG representing our voice on both issues. In addition, we will:

• Establish a true Good Samaritan policy - the current policy does not shield students from educational punishments; we believe that so long as they are genuinely not at risk of alcohol poisoning themselves (established through a clear standard of evidence) students should be able to unreservedly advocate for their own and their fellow Pioneers’ safety, and that any hindrances to this provide perverse incentives.

• Establish a policy that brings sober Orientation Leaders to parties during Orientation Week to assist in mitigating potential alcohol safety issues before it escalates to sending students to detox. DU selects these individuals for their responsibility; it is ridiculous to prevent them from attending events during which new students face the riskiest alcohol and sexual assault scenarios.

• Create a student commission to re-evaluate university policies regarding detox. We want to emphasize the utilization of Porter Hospital instead of Denver Cares so that detox, a costly and far away facility and procedure is only used in cases of clear and evident medical need, and so that students are not removed from their campus environment and neighborhood without impetus. In the next five years, we would like to see the University of Denver create an on-site detox facility through partnership with the Health and Counseling Center.

 

Sexual Assault

We believe a campus environment that is unsafe for any student is a campus environment that is unjust to all students. We abhor the actions which have led to DU’s feature in The Hunting Ground, the documentary detailing institutional negligence in issues of sexual assault. We will:

• Support all efforts to bring the Undergraduate Women’s Council’s Greek Education Program to chapters

• Provide USG funding for “Sex Booze and the Law” speaker sessions throughout the year to ensure that DU students have a clear understanding of the intersection between legal rights, alcohol consumption, and sexual assault.

• Implement the First Year Education Program and ensure that it gives significant and accurate information to students about sexual assault, rape culture, and how we as a university can promote a healthy environment.

• Work closely with DU’s new Title IX coordinator, CAPE, SCESA, Women’s Council and student government leaders at other universities to continually assess the University’s efforts at the administrative and student life levels to end sexual assault. We commit to be unafraid to speak out on behalf of the student voice in areas where there is institutional complacency in addressing sexual assault.

The Hickert-Davidson team gives its full commitment to bridge experience and action to create realistic, effective policy to better the lives of DU students. We will use our vision of grassroots-based, accessible leadership to give the student voice a platform at the University of Denver. Your vision is our vision, and we are honored to humbly ask for your vote to represent that vision to the administration next year.