Until Thursday, seniors Adam Walsh and Kyla Coy represented the official voice of the University’s students. As ASUO president and vice president, they each held more power than any other student government leader on campus.
Nevertheless, the pair entered the executive race in the spring of 2005 as underdogs with no experience in student governance, a background that strongly appealed to voters, Walsh said.
“Student government was in need of a year of government reform,” he said.
Their style of fiscally conservative governance has garnered praise from student government leaders and University administrators, Walsh said, and many of their policies and slogans seem to be continuing into the next administration.
After a year in the furnace of student government, both said their ideologies have remained tempered: They trust each other in representing the Executive viewpoint at meetings and events, and their interaction has remained more friendly than businesslike. This attitude of shared trust and respect transpired by chance, they said.
“We didn’t know that coming into it. It was a pleasant surprise,” Walsh said. “(Coy) has an analytical mind that mirrors that of some of the great thinkers.”
Coy teases Walsh about fretting over a veto for an entire weekend but said she admires how thoroughly he examines each situation and balances it with previous decisions and his own principles. They weren’t ASUO insiders, and they entered with a fresh view of how student government should be run, they said. Within days of being elected, Walsh sat at a table in the EMU Amphitheater to talk with students and take suggestions.
They even came up with a slogan, “Policy based on principle,” Walsh said. It wasn’t something shared with the public, but it manifest as consistency in the decision-making and fiscal responsibility, the hallmark of the governing year.
The executive vetoed numerous student fee allocations deemed superfluous or that diverted services from students, such as a proposed OSPIRG off-campus coordinator. Walsh and Coy canceled the Student Senate’s $3,100 allocation to send four Latino/a Law Student Association members to Washington D.C. because, they said, the group hadn’t raised funds.
The Walsh-Coy administration’s strategies for money management, as a day-to-day job of student government, have resulted in a minimal growth year for the student-paid incidental fee, a task that requires the work of every branch of government.
They set executive recommendations for budget season that kept the growth of the incidental fee at a minimum. They did this, they said, by allowing only necessary increases to student program budgets and guiding other government leaders toward similar fiscally responsible policy decisions.
Making a noticeable adoption of this mentality, the Senate throughout this year has prided itself in “nickel and diming” student programs, ensuring groups earn every cent they’re given.
With the many successes, there were some things Walsh and Coy said they would have done differently.
Appointing a chief of staff to manage the executive employees could have helped with organization, Coy said. Walsh said it would have allowed for a more cohesive vision by staff members. This suggestion was passed onto newly elected ASUO president Jared Axelrod, who has hired his campaign manager to run his executive staff for the 2006-07 fiscal year.
For now, Walsh and Coy are relaxing, partying and not worrying about their post-college plans.
They’ve yet to decide where they’ll go from here and are currently enjoying the freedom from student government, but Walsh said he has something in mind related to a future in politics.
“If I don’t have something lined up by January I’m going to move to the South,” he said. “That thought’s about as fleeting as anything.”