EVP candidate Shaker Samman discusses DSG changes ahead

Next Tuesday, the student body will elect a new Duke Student Government president, executive vice president and Student Organization and Funding Committee chair. The Chronicle's Gautam Hathi sat down with executive vice president candidate Shaker Samman, a sophomore, to discuss his goals for DSG Senate and his personal experience.

The Chronicle: Why do you feel qualified for this position?

Shaker Samman: For the last year I’ve served as senator for residential life, and in that time I’ve really gotten a great understanding of the way Senate works, for the good and for the bad. The inefficiencies as well as what we do well. Right now we’re in a huge restructuring process, where we’ve got a couple different viewpoints on how we should do it, and I’m one of the architects of one of these plans… to rebuild the Senate and make us more efficient. Right now the Senate is the biggest it’s ever been, so we feel that the easiest way to get rid of complacency, or at least start getting rid of complacency, and hold people more accountable to their peers and to their classmates is to rebuild and work with structure. There’s beauty in structure, there really is.

The role of the EVP in my mind is one that is really based in structure. You don’t pass legislation from the role, you’re not doing programming. The legislation you pass is all procedural, whether it be changing the inflation rate or changing wording in a by-law to account for whatever change in the real world. So I feel like… the restructuring process is going to be a really big deal, and being a part of it, and being one of the authors of the new idea, I think I can really help make us more efficient and help implement this new structure.

TC: Can you clarify your role in the restructuring process?

SS: I’m one of the six or seven authors [of one of the restructuring plans]. I personally did not write the plan from scratch—it was kind of a collaborative effort—but I helped spitball ideas about how we should do this.

TC: Why do you want to be executive vice president?

SS: In my time in Senate, I’ve seen some of the inefficiencies. I think there’s really beauty in structure, and as EVP I think I could do a really good job helping us be more efficient, helping us be more transparent. I think DSG is this really important entity, and we do a really good job of saying what we’ve done, but we don’t really do a good job of saying what we’re doing currently. I really want to be EVP because I want to make us better as an organization, as a group, to better serve our peers, to better serve our own interests—we’re students as well—as well as everybody else’s interests—our friends, our classmates, whatever.

TC: What are your goals for the position going into next year?

SS: My goal for the position is that we’ll have a higher standard of accountability on Senate and that we will also be more transparent.

On transparency, this year President [Lavanya] Sunder implemented these new DSG blogs, in which every senator can go on and track what they’re doing, talk about projects they’re working on, whatever it might be. But we haven’t really followed through on that, and I’m as guilty as anyone else in saying that I haven’t gone through and written my blog, because there’s been no pressure to do so. I think one of the biggest complaints about DSG is that we’re not transparent, is that we’re these power-hungry oligarchs who sit behind an iron veil, make decisions for ourselves and brag about it afterwards. That’s not how it should be, and that’s not what we should be striving for. We should be striving for openness and communication, and so I think the blogs—and publicizing what we’re working on now instead of what we’ve done—are a really good way of starting that first step. It’s not a perfect magic solution, but it’s a first step in the right direction.

In terms of complacency, I think with the Senate as big as it is, it’s really easy if you’re just slacking off to hide in the shadows, to blend into the crowd and get away. We implemented something last year and this year saying that if you have three or more unexcused absences your place is under review in front of the judiciary and you have to defend yourself. I think that’s a good thing, and I think we should continue down that road. Being on Senate is a privilege and it’s an honor that your classmates decided that you were fit enough to serve them. I think that’s something you should be held accountable to.

TC: What do you think of the current proposals to restructure the Senate?

SS: Everyone agrees the Senate’s too big and that we need to do something about it. There’s just two different groups that have these different plans. I’m obviously in agreement with the plan [that proposes] eliminating social culture as a committee and make it a cabinet position, shrinking the size of all of the committees to five [senators], to have one-third of the Senate be at-large and two-thirds elected, and increasing the role of ad-hoc senators. I think that’s a really good idea.

My biggest issue with the [other] plan is that it would deal with an apportionment model, much like the Electoral College, in which a block of 400-ish students would be set up into districts. And then each district would select on senator at which point they would go through an interview process to find out what committee they’re on.

My issue with that comes in two parts. First of all, I think that it would have the unintended consequence of disenfranchising independent voters. Senate voter turnout rates for those elections are very, very low. Last year’s Young Trustee election was the highest turnout we’ve had, and it’s the first one I can remember in my time here that broke 50 percent. Senate elections—I don’t want to give an exact number—I want to say they’re somewhere around 30 percent. So if you’re in a voting block with two SLGs or one fraternity and one SLG, and you’re electing two senators from that house, I mean it’s pretty easy to say that one group can put 50 votes down from candidate and one group can put 50 votes down for another candidate and the election’s over. Rather than it being 30 members out of 1500 for a specific senate spot, it becomes 50 out of 400 or 100 out of 400. So you’re effectively disenfranchising independent voters.

Second of all was the issue that one you’re elected and you’re put into this big pool, it essentially becomes rushing committees. The biggest issue with that is that if you’re not running on a platform for something that you really care about, you have a higher chance of complacency once you get to the Senate. I’m really interested in the housing model and helping both independent students and Greek students feel like they’re part of a community here. But let’s say I was elected into the Senate and I was put on facilities and the environment. I’m not going to have the same kind of drive and passion to help my peers.

You also end up getting campaigns in the Senate elections that aren’t centralized enough. [Candidates] don’t have any idea what they’re going to do. So you’ll get these outlandish things like “elect me and I’ll bring Chipotle onto campus” or “Chick-Fil-A will come back” when in actuality there’s no way anyone can do that. It’s impossible within the Senate structure. So you get way more vague ideas and less actual concrete goals that can be accomplishments.

TC: What do you consider to be DSG’s biggest priorities for the upcoming year?

SS: I think that, first and foremost, dealing with the housing model is always going to be a big thing. We’ve heard a lot of very recent backlash about [quotas for upperclassmen in selective houses]. Not me specifically, but members of my committee have been working on that for years.

Right now we’re going through a major curriculum review for Curriculum 2000. I think getting student voices and student input on that will be a huge deal. It’s very important to be able to get students’ voices on what we should be doing.

It being Duke, we’re always going to have something ludicrous that pops up in the middle of the year, such as the call-to-prayer.

I think on a personal level, DSG is supposed to be the liaison between the administration and the students. I think that in my role I’d have a really great chance to go ahead and meet with a bunch of different student organizations and get a pulse for the campus. I’d bring that to whatever committee on the Board [of Trustees] that I would serve on—as all EVPs do—and to the DSG executive board.

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