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NEWS / WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2011 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
POLITICS
Republican speaks on 2012 election
State Rep. Lynn Jenkins, from the second district in Kansas, said Tuesday that Republicans could be punished at the ballot box in 2012 if their plans to balance the budget angered senior citizens and other voters.
The KU College Republicans invited Jenkins to speak about the House Republican budget proposal for 2012 and attracted an audience of more than 20 people at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.
The congresswoman used some of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's charts and graphs to illustrate the federal spending, national debt and budget proposal that Republicans call "The Path to Prosperity."
She said if voters elected Republicans to the Senate and the executive office in 2012, the government would proceed with changes to Medicaid and Medicare as described by Ryan and would make cuts in defense as well as discretionary spending. At the same time, Jenkins said, revenue could be increased by closing loopholes in the tax code that currently leave 47 percent of the country, including corporations like General Electric Co., paying no taxes at all.
Jenkins said that Republican legislators elected in 2010 needed help from the electorate to carry out their plan.
"It's not enough to vote," Jenkins said. "We need you all to go out and get involved."
By Ian Cummings
Former leaders look back at their time in office
STUDENT SENATE
BY ANGELIQUE MCNAUGHTON
amcaundra@kansan.com
As their time as student body president and vice president wound down, student body leaders Michael Wade Smith and Megan Ritter took the time to sit down with The University Daily Kansan to reflect on their time in office. Smith and Ritter will give their final officer reports during the last Senate meeting of the year at Joint Senate Wednesday night in the Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. Following the reports, the former senators will leave and the newly elected senators will remain.
Looking back at their administration, both Smith, a senior from Goodland, and Ritter, a junior from Overland Park, consider their time in office a success.
Based on their numbers, it was.
"Seventeen out of 20 items is probably one of the biggest successes of a Student Senate administration in, for sure, recent history," Smith said. "I would venture to say history."
The numbers Smith refers to to are from the Student Senate Legislative Agenda list hanging in the Student Senate office. The agenda contains 20 platform issues promoted during Smith and Ritter's election campaign. Under their administration, 17 of their 20 platforms got accomplished, as denoted by a red check mark signifying completion. Smith said the most noteworthy accomplishment was the Wescoe Underground expansion.
"When we were running a year ago, people were really excited about making that horrible space down there at lunch time a little bit easier to navigate, and that's getting done," Smith said.
Construction on the 139-seat expansion will break ground in
May and will be completed around the end of August. Other platforms accomplished this year included self-defense classes for all students, an advertising partnership with the Lawrence Journal-World, the BIG Event and Jayhawk Tailgate.
But not everything Smith and Ritter said would get done did. One of their major platforms for the 2010 elections last April was the Student Services Center. The center would have included a variety of services, like academic achievement and success, disability services and a writing center.
"That was a case of where, despite our hardest efforts, that project will take more than a year," Ritter said.
Another failed platform was the game day on-campus busing. Ritter said she still supported the idea, but with the current level of cost for operation and maintenance, it wasn't feasible.
Despite the setbacks and perhaps lack of planning, Ritter and Smith would like to see conversations continue into next year regarding those ideas.
"There were some things that were very well-intentioned, and I still think very good ideas, that turned into far more complex issues than we
In picking up where Smith and Ritter's administration left off, Smith said he hoped the newly elected student body leaders, also members of KUnited, "don't forget to act right away."
"We were the ones who acted really quickly and probably should have planned it," Smith said. "I
had anticipated," Smith said.
think they will be planners who will wait to act."
Through those 17 successes and a few failures, there were some things they wish they had done differently. In addressing transparency concerns, Smith said, Student Senate could have provided better access to information.
Ritter said the most difficult time they encountered while in office was during block allocations. During block, Senate passed approval to cut funding for four community service programs in two years, creating a stir throughout campus and the community.
"We were the ones who acted really quickly and probably should have planned it. I think they will be planners who will wait to act."
"It generated a lot of negativity and a lot of that was misdirected at Michael," Ritter said. "But it was another case, I think, of not what's popular but what should be done. We also didn't realize the extent to which that would be unpopular."
Through the ups and downs, the pair endured everything thrown at them with minimal damage to their spirits, and at the end of the day,
MICHAEL WADE SMITH Former student body president
Ritter, said they are still the same dreamers as they were when they entered into their positions.
"We like to dream big and think about not just how things are but how they should be." Ritter said. "I think that
we came in that way and although we maybe became a little more grounded and more realistic in our dreams now. We will continue to push the possibilities of what can be and what can happen because I think that led to a lot of changes this year."
-Edited by Sarah Gregory
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