Platform

• Introduce and pass the Parking Manifesto as our first resolution in office, to guarantee student parking rights on campus.
• Improve student access to parking around the Tate Center and SLC
• Demand that housing-priority lots be more clearly marked
• Revise the alternative parking plan for final exams
• Encourage a reduction in the fine for first-time minor parking violations
• Increase the priority of undergraduate commuters, a large population that is often ignored
• Student Life: The Way It Should Be
• Work with Food Services to finally provide long-demanded services like a commuter (one meal a day) meal plan and Sunday night dinner service
• Encourage the Ramsey Student Center, Student Learning Center, and possibly the dining halls to install webcams so that students can see how crowded high-use areas are
• Create an online database of student-submitted apartment reviews, ratings, and costs to help other students make housing decisions
• Demand that Campus Transit reinstate the buses they took off the road for Spring 2006; as Transit only expected to save $2 per student for the semester, we should be looking to add rather than subtract services
• Reform and simplify the process for obtaining student tickets for football, and increase the number of ticketing windows available at Coliseum events
• Demand the removal of personal contact information from the online UGA Phonebook and encourage that this information be accesible from the MyUGA portal
• Oppose Athens-Clarke County's moratorium on fraternity and sorority house construction, and continue to fight for student rights with the ACC Commission
• Improved Academic Experience
• Don’t Forget the Split. Extend Drop/Add back to six days.
• Make mid-term and semester-end course evaluations available online
• Work with academic departments to put syllabi for every course online, in an easy-to-find place, before pre-registration ends -- making Drop/Add more useful and less stressful
• Expand and extend The Key to cover multiple years and include more features and tools (possibly including links to course evaluations and syllabi)
• Extend OASIS hours with the goal of extending the system to 24 hours
• Implement a Student Bill of Rights
• Improve availability for Permission of Department and Permission of Major classes, especially in the School of Public and International Affairs
• “Everyone’s Invited” to a new, better SGA
• Expand the Open Door so that students will know exactly where their tuition and fees are going
• Reform the method in which Student Government allocates its funds and work towards the eventual establishment of a student board that would administer the Student Activites Fee
• Rewrite the Student Government Constituion so that the student body as a whole is effectively represented
• Level the playing field. Reform the elections process so that more students have the opportunity to run
• Move Senate meetings back to the SLC and explore the possibility of moving them around campus, to be held in places such as dorm lobbies and classroom buildings.

This is our platform as it stands today. Every candidate in the Black Tie Party, and many others in our organization, have had the chance to have input into this document, and we're pretty excited about some of the things we hope to offer the student body. Even so, there's bound to be things we've overlooked. If you have any suggestions, no matter how "out there" they may seem, that could improve the student experience at UGA, please e-mail us at platform@ugablacktieparty.com. Don't be surprised to see your ideas in future revisions of the platform, or as SGA resolutions next term!