Matthew Rutkovitz is the new President of Student Government and Alison “McKay” Ellis is the new Vice President. The pair won the Student Government elections on April 1, 2012.
Rutkovitz is a junior and an entrepreneurship major. This school year he served as the Director of Special Events for Student Government. He is also involved in the Entrepreneurship Club, Hillel, Better Together and Tuesday Community Conversations.
Ellis is also a junior. She is majoring in government and world affairs and minoring in public speaking. She is a member of Delta Zeta and is the Student Coordinator for Events and Services for OSLE. She has also been a senator for Student Government for the past three years, and was a UT Diplomat for a year and a half. She is going to be doing an internship with the Department of State and will also be going on the PEACE trip to Switzerland.
Minaret: Describe the election process.
Ellis: Matt and I have known each other for three years. We knew in the fall that we wanted to run together.
Rutkovitz: We knew right from the get-go that we wanted to run with each other and we threw around the idea a lot, but it wasn’t really set in stone until about right before winter break. Once we finally realized that we wanted to run, we had to be very careful about what we did. We couldn’t go around saying that we were running because you can’t campaign until they allow you to, which was March 20. We were just really involved on campus and going out and showing our faces. We just went to various organizations, just put our faces out. We would just sit in the courtyard a lot, be in public areas where we were visible. We made sure to meet new people. From there, we knew we knew one of our biggest goals from the get-go was that we wanted just as many votes for us as they had in the entire election last year.
Ellis: Yeah, that was one of our strategies. We did have people come up to use and be like “Hey! Are you running?” and it was really hard. We weren’t able to be like “Oh, ya. For sure.”. We definitely focused on branching out and meeting new people. Definitely getting our names out there. I became a student coordinator in OSLE and got involved in a lot of other organizations. We started coming to events and going to things that we wouldn’t normally go to like a lacrosse game and things that involved school spirit. One of the great things was that Matt and I were friends before hand and so people started seeing us together so we kind of looked like a team, even before we started campaigning.
Minaret: How do you guys complement each other as a team?
Ellis: We complement each other in that Matt is very level-headed, very secure and very confident whereas I am a poly-sci major so I am out there and ready to go and he is like “All right McKay, let’s double check this.” I keep him more on edge and I think he lowers me down back to earth.
Rutkovitz: I couldn’t agree more. McKay is very goal-oriented and gets things done when they need to be done and I am more of a big-picture kind of guy. I would definitely say that we complement each other almost to the T. There are not very many areas where we butt heads about the topic, and if we do, we easily compromise.
Minaret: What are some things you plan to do as president and vice president?
Ellis: One of the things that we definitely want to improve on is Residence Life. There seems to be a problem where students seem to feel like they are being disrespected and faculty feeling like they’re being disrespected. We want to make sure that both the students and the faculty are respected and they are getting things done and they are cooperative. ResLife is a very difficult task and we want to make sure that students understand that they are doing the best that they can. We definitely want to make sure that the ResLife situation gets better. Also, our Green Initiative. Our school focuses on green things on campus. We want to make sure that we continue that.
Rutkovitz: I would say that those are our two biggest goals right off the bat. The biggest thing that we are really pushing for is realistic goals. These goals that we are setting with the Green Initiative and with ResLife are definitely capable within the first semester, if not, within the year. They are also physical changes that we feel are going to be able to show as well. They are not just going to be written down on paper. Eventually, we want these to be physical changes. That’s the toughest part – getting them to become physical changes. That’s where we feel that our experience is going to step in and really help
Ellis: Many people believe that when they run for Student Government, they can change the world, and that’s great – setting your goals high. However, you have to be realistic that everything goes through a process. This is a university, so as a student, we can want something, but it has to go through five different committees and has to be approved by 20 of the top people in Tampa. Everything is a process, and we need to make sure to set realistic goals. By taking baby steps, bigger things can be accomplished. That’s one of the main reasons why one of the things we campaigned about is that we are going to set realistic goals. We’re not going to lie to you. We’re not going to tell you that certain things are going to be able to happen.
Rutkovitz: And I would also say that we really want to push honesty and involvement and passion throughout the student body too. We want each and every student on this campus to be just as passionate about this school as we are and I think that’s really hard to spread sometimes because some people just don’t know where to get involved, how to get involved. There was double the amount of votes than there was last year, but there is still 7,000 students at this school.That’s barely one-fourth of the population and I really feel that that can be worked on. We want general assemblies to be packed. We want people to be able to come to the student government office whenever they have an issue, email us whenever they have an issue. The biggest thing is just knowing where to go and getting involved.
Ellis: One of the best (pieces of) advice that I got when I was a freshman from my academic advisor was that to be successful at this school, you have to get involved. That means you start really small in a small organization in your freshman year, and you just move up. We want to make sure that students coming into the school are really getting involved and if that means that you want to be a senator, go for it. If you voted on BlackBoard, you could see that some of the positions weren’t filled. That’s not something we want. We want all the the positions to be filled – we want it to be a competition. In the long run, it’s all about making the school better. To make that happen, you have to get involved.
Rutkovitz: I think that it was very difficult for us because we had three competitors, so there was four ballot teams, and each one of them had momentum coming in. Each one of the them had a good amount of steam coming out behind them and were ready to make a change. We feel that just showing our faces and showing people that were not our friends that we cared and their vote was important to us, was really important. The fact that we spread our passion for student government through the campus, we felt was what really set us above the others. We were walking around in our student government polos. We were showing up to different organizations’ meetings and events. We just showed people that we cared.
Minaret: Any other comments?
Ellis: I think that there is a lot of speculation and there is a lot of accusation towards our campaign and if you don’t know the truth, then there is no reason to talk about it. It was something that both of us felt that our names got tarnished and that in no way reflects who we are or what our campaign and our strategies and goals are. We just want to make sure that the student body knows that we are here for them.
Rutkovitz: (We apologize) if there is any speculation around our name. But if they want to come and talk about change or their opinion they have about this campus, we are more than willing to lend an open ear and see what they have to say. We want people to be so focused on their own improvement that they don’t have any time to criticize others.
Ellis: I think that was the hardest part of the whole campaign.
Rutkovitz: It was hard to stay positive, stay honest and stay on the right track the whole time, but we knew that if we stayed honest, stayed positive, stayed focused and kept on spreading that passion, then we were going to win.
Ellis: This has been the most difficult two weeks of our college careers.
Rutkovitz: Definitely.
Ellis: But it worked out really great for both of us.
Shivani Kanji can be reached at minaret.news@gmail.com.