Emily Guskin, a junior who was picked last week to be the fourth student liaison to the College Park City Council, says she wants to hit the ground running in her new position. That’s good, because her predecessor, Drew Vetter, never really got off the ground. He was silent on many important student issues and, though he went to council meetings, dragged his feet in the sand when it came to presenting the council with clear, clever and well-researched ideas. The student liaison is the most vocal position students have in the city and Guskin needs to be more aggressive, more outspoken and more dedicated than Vetter was if she is going to serve her constituents well.
Students leaders have in the last several years touted relations with city officials as one of their areas of focus. Incoming Student Government Association President Andrew Rose’s platform included making College Park more of a college town. Issues like rent control, safety and city parking have become as important to many students as issues involving tuition and campus life. The liaison cannot vote in council meetings but is the student body’s main pipeline for representation at City Hall. Students fought hard for the position. They knew the success of the university and its students depends in large part on its environment — the city. And they understood the success of the city depends in large part on the university. But the spot students fought for could disappear if Guskin and her successors do not take the position more seriously and dedicate more resources to it. The position was killed once before because of a lack of student activism. It could happen again.
Eric Swalwell, the first liaison since the position was revived several years ago, laid a strong foundation on which successive liaisons could build. Unfortunately, Vetter did not build much this year. He often followed the lead of Aaron Kraus, the outgoing SGA president, in choosing which student issues to fight for and saw the failure of his only well-thought out idea, CityStat, a comprehensive database of city statistics that was modeled on a similar Baltimore City program. Both he and Kraus dropped the ball this year in their push to lower the running age for city council and getting a polling place on campus by failing to provide the council with thorough research on the benefits of the proposals.
Though Guskin does not take over the liaison position until May 10, she must be working now to create strong ties with fellow student leaders and with city officials. She needs to lay out a comprehensive agenda for the year so student issues and student voices are not lost in the council agenda in the next year. So far, Guskin has only offered vague ideas of improving city-university relations and getting council members more interested in student issues. That’s never going to work if she does not have firm plans on how to improve the relations or increase the interest. Guskin’s excitement about the position is certainly obvious. But Vetter had a similar enthusiasm, and he has little to show for his year in office.
