Kudos to Nourish International. As a proud African, it pleases me to know there is a group on campus fighting the good fight in terms of raising awareness about global poverty and its spread into underdeveloped countries.

Nonetheless, when Kirk Carter wrote an endorsement for the Remix Party on Monday, he should have mentioned that he is a card-carrying staffer for the Remix Party.

Basically the Remix Party endorsed themselves. Talk about remixes.

Nonetheless, let me introduce myself. My name is Jaiah Scott and I am an active student here on our campus. I am a member of groups like University Judiciary and African Student Union an organization committed to educating the community about Africa through many different ways, such as our annual African Night.

As a senior, I have consistently seen how student government campaigns have simply been a battle of the cool kids. Once elected there has been a failure to truly become a true student government. Instead they fashion themselves as only an advocacy group.

This serves no purpose. It simply leaves all major decisions in the hands of administrators while students have no real say. Sure, the administration will have a meeting with SGA president to hear their complaints but in the end nothing gets done.

The reason for this dilemma is simple. Students do not have an adequate voice in how Student Activities Fees are allocated.

Right now, every year students pay $146 to the University. After administrators decide how they want the $4.4 million to be allocated, they leave only $10,000 dollars for small groups such as Nourish International.

Although this $10,000 is available to any small group and any student with a registered student organization can apply for these funds, the hoops one has to jump through are just too high and too many.

What the New Deal is proposing is that concerned students elected by other concerned students open up the process to all student organizations big or small. This way groups like Nourish International will have funding to reach out to students for their cause.

Katie Barlow, Cameron Secord and Joe Chaudoin have already have met with administrators such as Vice President of Student Affairs Rodney Bennett, Vice President of Financial Affairs Tim Burgess, Director of Legal Affairs Steve Shewmaker and the office of President Michael Adams.

Every last one of them like these ideas, encouraged the New Deal to run on this platform, and would actually like to see these changes happen.

This idea is great because it gives students a say in where their money is going. Current student organizations will see no decrease in their current funding as All Campus Allocations will still renew the current budgets for groups.

When you add on the fact that the New Deal will advocate for minimum sanctions reform, it is a no-brainer for me not only to endorse Katie, Cameron and Joe but to also work to get them elected. You should too, by logging onto OASIS and voting for Katie, Cameron, Joe and the New Deal. Also check out the contract at http://www.uganewdeal.com/contract.html.

- Jaiah Scott is a senior from Marietta majoring in economics.