Every Wesleyan student should support Mike Pernick ’10 and Saul Carlin ’09 for WSA President/Vice President.
First, Mike. WSA President often goes to someone purely on the basis of seniority or popularity. Mike offers something different: competence, the ability to actually change the University for the better. He works harder than anybody, and the results show it.
I would like to offer two examples where I have personally seen Mike do just that. These two aren’t exceptional: other people I’m sure have similar stories. But they reflect my experiences with Mike.
When I tried to bring a U.S. Senate candidate to campus, and the administration wouldn’t let me—creating a new policy that effectively barred candidates from speaking at Wesleyan during election season—I called Mike.
Mike was all it took.
He went to other WSA members, including the equally-impressive Saul. He worked for and built consensus. He had meeting after meeting with faculty, administrators and the University’s counsel. He brought in guest speakers, went over tax law with a fine-tooth comb and consulted with outside attorneys.
In the end, he persuaded the administration that the existing policy was wrong, got the administration to back down, and had a new political speaker policy adopted that has made bringing speakers to campus a hundred times easier.
In November, I was elected to the Middletown Planning and Zoning Commission, the first student elected to office in recent memory. One of the first problems we have had to deal with was a base that the Army was trying to build in the middle of Maromas, a section of Middletown southeast of the University along the Connecticut River.
While many students and Middletown residents would be receptive to an Army base elsewhere in Middletown, the site in question was absolutely awful. It would have devastated an environmental treasure, ripping the heart out of the largest open space in Middletown, the largest contiguous forest left on the lower Connecticut River.
In order to force the Army to back down on that particular site, the Middletown community had to band together.
Once again, I called Mike.
This time, he brought the mayor and an environmental expert before the WSA and got a toughly worded WSA resolution passed—unanimously and in record time—opposing the location of the Army base. We can’t give Mike all the credit—citizen activists, the Common Council, our congresswoman and a few state legislators certainly deserve their fair share—but the Army quickly announced that it was “de-prioritizing” placing the base in the environmentally sensitive area and would consider alternate sites. That particular battle was won, although the larger fight is still not over, and Mike Pernick deserves a lot of credit.
I’m not the only one to think so. In fact, in its write-up of the Army’s decision, the Middletown Press specifically mentioned Mike’s WSA resolution as one of the crucial factors that helped contribute to the decision to look at less environmentally damaging sites for the Army base.
I am sure lots of other people have similar stories. If you want results, if you want things to happen, you call Mike. He has the drive, the savvy and the brains to get things done.
He will be a fantastic WSA President, and Saul Carlin, a tremendously effective WSA member in his own right, will be a terrific Vice President.
Don’t just vote for someone just because you like them—that’s how we wound up with eight years of George Bush, after all. Look instead for the best candidates, the most effective, the ones best able to represent your concerns to the administration. This year, right now, there’s no question — Mike and Saul are the way to go.
Just remember to vote!
Leave a Reply