Meet Lucy Snyder, president of A Hunter Alliance

Lucy Snyder is a Senior in the Macaulay Honors scholarship and an Adolescent Math Education major. Hoping to use her upcoming fifth year in Hunter to its fullest, she is currently running for President in the slate A Hunter Alliance. I sat down with her and talked to her about why she is running, and what she and Alliance hope to achieve for the Hunter body.

The Tab: Why are you running for President of A Hunter Alliance?

Lucy Snyder: This year was my first year in USG as Finance Commissioner. I really got to see the internal workings quickly, and I really thought that I could do a better job of managing it and that it would translate better on the outside as a more “getting things done” organization. In terms of what I can see as doing better, there was a long period of time where we didn’t have regular meetings. Things weren’t being brought up, even if it didn’t seem urgent, and that caused a back-log of stuff, especially with the dependency on other offices within Hunter. There was a lot of lack of communication between commissioners who had the ideas but weren’t following through and weren’t communicating either to their campaign members or to other Executive Board members. That resulted in people stepping on other people’s toes and crossing boundaries, which caused some tensions within. So, I would like to re-clarify everyone’s positions – make sure they know what they’re responsible for – and then create an effective, collaborative system for the Executive Board.

The Tab: If you were chosen as President, what would your first steps be?

Lucy Snyder: The first thing would be to hear from the students, and let them know that we’re here for them. We want to create something like a Google form where you can just submit anything that you want to tell us – anonymously, a concern, a feeling, a compliment – anything. We want to bring those into weekly discussions in our meetings, have people get back to those students if they choose to identify themselves, and say, “OK, we’ve talked about your issue, this is where it stands.” We really want the students to hold us accountable for what we do – whether it’s something that’s an idea of ours, or it’s an idea of theirs that we can follow through, or it’s something where they don’t know where to go and we can point them in the right direction. I would update the website regularly with events that are happening, like club events. We have an explicit timeline for Participatory Budgeting, so that’s something that we would kick off right away. We would plan town hall meetings at the beginning of the semester – we want to have at least two a semester – so that people get to voice their concerns, as well as do it easily online.

The Tab: Regarding your role as Finance Commissioner in the present USG, what did you do? And how is USG functioning right now?

Lucy Snyder: As Finance Commissioner, I meet with club presidents and treasurers to review their budgets, so I’m the first person that sees their budget before it is reviewed by the Executive Board and the Senate. Then it goes to the College Association (CA) for final approval. This is a chance where I get to hear about their events and how they’re spending their money, and also potentials for co-sponsorships with USG. That was my favorite part, meeting those people and seeing how passionate they are. It’s kind of crazy to run a club here – I’m not sure I could do it, and I have a lot of respect for these people. My responsibilities were pretty clear-cut, but also very interconnected with everyone else, because there is money being spent on every event that happens and I’m the one responsible for the USG part of dealing with that paperwork before it goes off to the CA. That being said, the CA has deadlines that are strict and infrequent, so when we don’t have a meeting and we don’t have a vote, it throws back everything. If I miss their deadline, the club doesn’t get their money; and if they don’t have their budget approved, they don’t get 100 per cent reimbursement if they do spend money.

The Tab: What is the main platform on which A Hunter Alliance is running? How is it different from those of United and Revolution?

Lucy Snyder: The first way we’re different is that we’re a lot smaller – we don’t have a full slate. That’s how you know that people are running for the positions that they want to do. We also have less manpower, so it’s less about getting flyers out there and more about the conversations that we’re going to have with people and that they get to see who we are. Also, I and another person are the only returning USG members that are on our slate, so I’m really excited by all these new faces. I’ve been working with them for the past five or six weeks, and their energy is so high. They’re not intimidated by the fact that they would be entering a new job and they may not be prepared for it, but they have the ideas and they know they have the team that would help them execute it. That is what I think sets us apart. They are also more focused from the students’ point of view – as a student who has not been involved in USG, they can see or tell me what they have or have not seen from the outside. I can use that input.

As for our platform, it is based on our slogan – “You and Me for HC”. It’s about having the students come to us, and to make that connection – to make it so easy for them to be in contact with us and so comfortable coming to us with anything. I’m really passionate about having students hold us accountable for what we do, so I know it doesn’t have to be as explicit as coming to follow up with us about something, because a lot of students don’t have the time for that, but then we need to be responsible for sending messages back. If you see an event that you want done, and there’s been no discussion of it because you we’re at our meeting and it didn’t even come up, that should be an issue. We want to make sure that students can see what we’re talking about – there’s nothing to hide. And if we did make a mistake, or we are failing or lacking in one area, let us know.

The Tab: Let’s talk about Participatory Budgeting. What is that, and how will it change the Hunter USG to make it more efficient?

Lucy Snyder: I think that it’s a hot topic because it’s being developed at a lot of other CUNY schools right now, especially Baruch. Participatory Budgeting is where the money the students are putting in via their Student Activities Funds should allow them to directly get a say in how it is allocated. The Hunter system splits up the Student Activities fees into, say, 15 different areas. Student Government is one of them, the media board is one of them. So all the funds that USG gets, we get to pretty much do as we please, with certain exceptions like salaries and upkeep and the SRC and whatever. USG itself, for events, has a budget of like over $200,000. What Participatory Budgeting says in general is that, let’s take that money and let the students tell us where to put it.

The way that we want to do that is – obviously, that is a huge sum and a lot of people don’t know how much things cost or how to do it – so the way we’re going to do it is to start off by setting aside from the get-go $10,000-$15,000 that students will be able to propose ideas for what to do with that. If they want a Spring Concert, that’s a huge expense. The Club Fair is another thing. There are just some things that happen every single year that – maybe they don’t want to spend that much on, but since it is a new thing for Hunter, we have to start off relatively small and see where it goes. If it is successful, the way that we would do this is to set aside this money, receive proposals, revise them within USG using our expertise, send them back out for a vote, and then whatever comes through the vote would be worked into the Spring semester budget. So it does take a while, but also after it’s been implemented once or twice it can move along faster, especially when students become aware of how the process works.

The Tab: Could you summarize your platform very briefly so people would know what Alliance stands for?

Lucy Snyder: We summarize using three “C” words – Community, Connectivity, and Clarity. Community is about making sure individuals don’t get lost in this big school, and not focusing on just the clubs. Connectivity is about being the bridge between the students and the administration, and students and other students – with us being a kind of traffic cop, directing the programs. Clarity is about the accessibility and making sure everything easy to find, easy to access, nothing to hide.

The Tab: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Lucy Snyder: We have a lot of concrete ideas. Everything is about a collaboration and an effective way to do so, but that’s not an abstract idea to us – we really have ideas, certain events. Some of my people have already been doing research for things that, should they get elected, they will do. Nicole Krishtul (running for Student Welfare Commissioner) went to our health center and asked if we have a nurse, and if we’ve ever had a nurse, and if that’s something our students want. So she’s already asking these questions. Peter Rostovsky (running for Evening Affairs Commissioner) and Jyothis Johnson (running for Faculty/Student Disciplinary Committee) have been doing research on Participatory Budgeting. We decided that we were going to do a collaboration with the Hunter Sustainability Project that is doing the Food Waste project during Election Week, and we’ll be volunteering with them. The ideas that my slate has – I’m so impressed by them! They just keep the discussion going that I almost can’t keep up with it, but it’s so great. We’re ready. And since we’re not a full slate, they’re running for the positions that they want.

The Tab: Wouldn’t you need more manpower, so to speak?

Lucy Snyder: I think so, and I think one of our weaknesses is lack of recognition with most people. I think that I have pretty good connections with a lot of people, also having been here for four years, and having in finance had over 100 Finance Control Board meetings. So I am worried about that, but I’m just hoping that the conversations that we have are meaningful and we get people to vote no matter what during Elections Week. I believe everyone in our slate wants it enough that they’ll put in twice the energy – each will put in the energy of two people.