"Senate is the hardest job that I've ever loved." These words are not my own, but can be heard from many members of the TCU Senate who have dedicated their time to serving the student body. Having served on senate myself since September 2003, I can attest that while charisma, leadership skills, and dedication are all essential to serving as an effective senator, experience and knowledge of the inner-workings of the TCU are of equal importance.
As experience and knowledge are essential to serving as an effective senator, they are even more essential in leading the senate itself as TCU president. In this letter, I aim to demonstrate to our student body that one must have experience and knowledge of the TCU in order to lead the TCU. Furthermore, I urge the student body to elect current TCU Treasurer Harish Perkari as next year's TCU President, because he has both the former (charisma, leadership skills, and dedication) as well as the latter (experience and knowledge) attributes that are essential to serving as an effective president.
Let me begin with an analogy. Imagine that an intelligent, ambitious professor, straight out his or her PhD program, enters an academic department at Tufts. After one semester, this professor has proved him or herself as an extremely valued member of the department. Subsequently, this novice professor decides that he or she has the ideological freshness to run the entire department and bring forth new objectives that have been sorely lacking for years. What he soon realizes is that the department does not run on ideas alone; instead, the department operates through multiple layers of administration, with various committees and sub-committees whose existences are based upon numerous operating procedures and bylaws that seem to have pre-dated the dawn of time! Furthermore, this ambitious professor realizes that the department's objectives are strictly inhibited by a non-negotiable budget. Suddenly, idealism meets the challenge of reality. This challenge can be overcome, but only through enthusiasm and dedication coupled with experience and know-how.
Senate functions much like the above-mentioned academic department. The organizational schema of the senate is organized into two divisions - the project (lobbying) end and the financial end. The project end of the senate consists of six standing committees. For example, while the Services Committee deals closely with dining services to improve dining options on campus, the Education Committee works closely with faculty and administrators to strengthen curricular options and ensure the tenure of capable professors. Moreover, an understanding of how Senate committees operate is essential in planning the wonderfully optimistic objectives that our three candidates all plan to accomplish. Without having spent significant time on one or more of these committees, I argue that the president will be ill-equipped in executing his or her ideological objectives. Imagine a president of the United States who has no in-depth knowledge of how to effectively utilize the executive branch - in the national arena, this is a recipe for disaster; for our purposes, this is simply a recipe for getting nothing productive done.
Harish currently serves as the TCU Treasurer and manages the over $1 million student activities fund. As stated, the other essential operation of the Senate is that of the TCU Treasury. Therefore, understanding how this fund is managed and allocated is essential in presiding over the senate. In more concrete terms, in addition to fully grasping the financial needs of student groups across campus, the president, along with the treasurer, must at all times be cognizant of the financial crunch facing our university. Speaking personally, throughout my time on senate, I have seen many good ideas go down the drain due to a lack of funding. Understanding how our financial system operates is necessary in understanding how to overcome the fiscal challenges and limitations we face on a day-to-day basis. For example, for those of you who believe that pay-for-printing is disappearing sometime soon, I can assure you after three years of examining this project that pay-for-printing will continue to be a household name unless there is some very creative and extensive budget restructuring.
Taking these facts into account, I urge you to realize that the TCU President is both president of the student body as well as of the Senate itself. As indicated above, the Senate functions like any organized body, and does not carry out its good work through ideas and enthusiasm alone. Instead, these wonderful ideas and enthusiastic energies must be coupled with experience and knowledge of how the body functions. Like any activity in life, serving on Senate takes time and practice in order to perfect the arts of lobbying and fiscal understanding.
After reviewing the credentials and backgrounds of our three qualified candidates, I urge you to choose Harish Perkari, who is by far the most qualified. Serving along side of Harish on Senate since our freshman year, I am certain that he has both the personal attributes as well as the skills needed to accomplish his goals for our university. In view of that, when you vote tomorrow, please remember that while ideas are crucial for any successful leader, they remain just that - ideas - unless coupled with experience and comprehensive understanding.
Andrew Caplan, JuniorTCU Senator '04, '05, '07
