Annie Adair seeks overhaul of DSG processes in presidential campaign

<p>Junior Annie Adair transferred from Virginia Tech and currently serves as DSG chief of staff.&nbsp;</p>

Junior Annie Adair transferred from Virginia Tech and currently serves as DSG chief of staff. 

Junior Annie Adair wants to redefine the way that Duke Student Government interacts with students and build better relationships with campus organizations if elected the next president.

Adair, a native of Arlington, Va., is the current DSG chief of staff. She hopes to increase measures to combat sexual assault on campus and to create a more open social environment for Greek-affiliated and independent students.

While chief of staff, Adair has served as the chair of the Young Trustee Nominating Committee, was one of three women on the Interfraternity Council sexual assault prevention task force, helped implement the DevilsGate program to enhance the football gameday experience for students and collaborated with current President Keizra Mecklai, a senior, to implement a C5 bus route to take students from Central Campus to East Campus.

"DSG presidents can be distant," Adair said. "You can be top-down and then make decisions based on personal views, but I believe that we can even the playing field and build strong relationships that target policy."

Adair transferred from Virginia Polytechnic Institute following her freshman year. An independent student, Adair said she hopes to create a more open environment within DSG and within Duke's social culture.

"You don’t have to be a merit scholar or a member of Greek life to be represented [by DSG]," Adair said. "Sixty percent of the student body is not represented in DSG. I want to work with [Student Organization Funding Committee] to have more open events on campus."

She also would like to focus on better combating sexual assault on campus by collaborating with groups including the Women's Center, the Panhellenic Association and Interfraternity Council.

Adair has worked with other members of DSG to address issues that have been discussed on Fix My Campus or have been directly brought up with members of the executive cabinet. She noted that she and Mecklai collaborated on creating a plan for a new bus route after the East-Central transit route was eliminated.

"In the summer, I recognized that they cut the C2 and people were writing on Fix My Campus about it," Adair said. "I wrote a bunch of different proposals, and one of them was the C5, which Keizra and I went in and proposed. The C5 exists because Keizra and I went for it."

Adair also collaborated with senior Bryan Dinner, vice president of social culture, to design the DevilsGate line monitor organization while living in Durham over the summer.

Zachary Gorwitz, a junior who has worked alongside Adair in both DSG and the Duke Political Review, spoke to her devotion for making Duke accessible and enjoyable for students on campus.

"She's uniquely bold—she has redefined the Chief of Staff position, and I know she'll do the same for the entirety of DSG," Gorwitz wrote in an email. "It certainly needs to be reimagined, and Annie is the right person for the job."

As DSG president, Adair plans to spend surplus money that DSG has not used by reaching out to students and learning their preferences for the monetary allocation.

"We have a $200,000 surplus, and we need to decide on how to spend it. If we gave free Zagster memberships or invest $50,000 in LDOC, I wouldn’t say I am principally against it," Adair said.

John Burness, visiting professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy and former senior vice president for public government affairs and public relations, expressed his admiration for Adair's attentive nature.

"I have found Annie to be a thoughtful, diligent, perceptive, engaged and occasionally humorous student in my seminar on higher education and the news media," Burness said. "That is a combination of qualities I wish I saw more in our nation's presidential candidates."

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