Today, the candidates give responses to the question "What is your biggest goal for next year? How do you intend to achieve this goal?"

Theresa Bowman - President

My biggest goal for next year is to work with the CDO in striving to help our students and new alumni succeed in a difficult job market.  I will do this by continuing to promote programs that I put into place this year such as the Student Career Mentoring Program as well as student panels on networking.  I will also work to establish an alumni database in which students can more quickly get in contact with alumni in their preferred practice areas and geographic destinations.   Programs like these will not get students jobs overnight.  At the same time, the next SBA President will be in the unique position to enable the SBA and the GW Law community as a whole to do everything possible to help our students in the job market.

This effort will include nurturing a strong, trusting relationship between the SBA and the student body.  This year's SBA has done a good job of making senate meetings more accessible to students and I support this initiative.  In particular, I would like to continue to improve the SBA website to become more of a tool for students to use on a day-to-day basis.  Our student community should be informed of all the ways in which the SBA stands to benefit them and voice their concerns.  Without open communication, the SBA becomes less effective at voicing student concerns.

Giri Iyengar - President

My biggest and possibly hardest goal is to implement greater transparency, as I say in my candidate statement. I have worked under and with the inevitable bureaucracy, obscurity and inaccessibility that come with any sufficiently large organization. I think GW Law does a terrific job of minimizing these effects and I want to expand on that. If there is any measure of student happiness and satisfaction with the institution (and many believe there can be a subjective measure), I would like to increase that. Faculty-Student interaction, SBA accessibility, clarity from the school on issues important to students, a better road-map for the three years ahead of entering 1Ls, these and other similar ideas can help achieve that. I don't expect it to be easy, though. I should also point out that I believe the current SBA had done a lot to take us down that path. We just have to keep going.

Rushab Sanghvi - President

There are many goals for the SBA to work towards achieving in the next year.  However I feel the biggest of these goals would be to expand the career development options available to students.  In the current economic environment, the one thing on every student's mind is finding a job.  Our Career Development Office has been woefully inefficient in both helping students find employment and in providing useful information.  Though some of the career advisors are helpful, I have all too frequently heard complaints about the services offered.  While I would love to promise a complete overhaul of the CDO, that would be something that would not be achievable by the SBA or necessarily even advisable.  Thus, what the SBA can and should do is create new career service initiatives.  The Career Mentoring Program created by Theresa Bowman, one of the candidates for President, is a commendable start.  I would like the SBA to build upon this and create more opportunities for students to interact with other students and with alumni.  Some ideas would include increasing the number of alumni mixers we hold, creating a separate mentoring program matching students with specific interests with alumni practicing in those fields, and creating a informational database with helpful advice provided by alumni and students who have been successful in finding employment.  In addition, I would continue to work with the law school administration to improve our CDO by informing them of our complaints and providing suggestions for improvement.

Dan Janow - Executive Vice President

I've talked to many students about this and they say time and time again that what they want more than anything else is flexible exams.  This would be one of my primary goals and I think I could work with the current school administration and the SBA President to make sure this gets accomplished.  As someone who had two exams on the same day, in consecutive exam periods last semester I understand the difficulties and stresses locked scheduling creates for students.  I think a policy whereby at a minimum, students who have multiple exams in the same day could alter their exam schedule should be acceptable to the administration.  I understand that there are real concerns about cheating, but as law school students I feel as though we should be given the benefit of the doubt to take exams honorably.

Another problem that I would help solve is the apparent lack of understanding that student groups have about how budgets operate and how the SBA determines its budget.  I want to clarify that this is separate from publishing the entire budget, which I oppose.  However I do think student groups have the right to know the guidelines the SBA has for making its budget decisions and how they can spend their money to encourage the SBA to give their groups higher funding in subsequent years.  This year I went out with the 1L SBA Senators out to lunch and explained to them how the SBA budget functions, something that was never done for me when I was a 1L Senator.  I think a similar event for student group leadership would benefit the entire law school community.

I also want to continue my pet project, colorfully named operation DomiNO.  This program which I spearheaded would seek to end the Dominos hegemony in our club meal choices.  The issue is that student groups who purchase meals for their organization have to front their member's personal money, unless they order Dominos which has a program set up to take money directly out of a club's budget.  Although we encountered difficulties early in the process, with the help of Sen. Albert Williams we had another vender sign up.  As EVP I would organize the Senators in a way that we could speak to many more vendors, which would increase food variety and cut down on paperwork for our very overworked VP of Finance.

Deep Singh - Executive Vice President

My goal for next is the same goal I had when I served as Section 12 Senator and Day Division Senator: make sure that people have fun and help to minimize the stress they go through during law school.  GW Law has a reputation for having a strong, vibrant, and collegial stude nt body, and it is one of the SBA's jobs to ensure that continues.

As the Executive Vice President, I will be able to do this by encouraging the development of new and better programming by the Executive and the individual Senators.  For example, we can build on the CDO Liaison to develop programs in conjunction with the CDO that are targeted to students' specific needs.  We can provide more support for the First Year Mentoring Program so there are more formal opportunities for mentors and mentees to get together.  I can encourage Senators, especially the new 1L Senators, to put together events that create a bond between the students.  I can also provide support to organizations as they carry out their events by facilitating co-sponsorships and encouraging stronger relationships between them, the administration, the alumni, the SBA, and world outside of the Law School.  Finally, this also means making sure the little things get taken care of - from making sure that the bathrooms are actually stocked with soap and paper towels to addressing technology problems.