Sandhu for Internal Vice President
Due to her experience as the Student Association Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission head, we, the Thresher Editorial Board, endorse Sohani Sandhu for Internal Vice President.
Sandhu, a junior, has spent all three years of her time at Rice involved with the SA, as a commission head for the past two years and a McMurtry College New Student Representative prior to that. In an interview with the editorial board, Sandhu rightfully noted that quick changeover in the SA makes it difficult to accomplish long-term tasks. We believe her history of advocacy and experience with the SA will poise her well to challenge these roadblocks.
We applaud Sandhu’s opponent, McMurtry first-year representative and parliamentarian Ananya A. Nair, for her candidacy. We resonate with many parts of her platform, especially her philosophy that the SA should approach the students — not vice versa. As a freshman, Nair can bring a new perspective to the SA.
But, she’s younger and greener than Sandhu, and we feel her policies could be fleshed out further. We find that some of her proposals, such as standardizing dining hours and providing student jobs in the serveries, are already being implemented by the relevant departments. However, we think Nair would make a great future IVP, and encourage her to join the SA, gain some experience and try again.
We appreciate Sandhu’s comprehensive platform, which tackles three areas we agree the SA should improve. Sandhu aims to improve connection between the SA and student body, increase SA Commission impact and ensure that projects, especially NSR-led ones, are followed up on across years.
Many of the SA’s successful recent initiatives, such as installing menstrual product dispensers in restrooms and servery composting bins, have been the work of commissions. Sandhu’s firsthand experience with SA commissions, then, will be crucial in an IVP position in charge of overseeing them.
Notably, Sandhu is thinking critically about the SA’s performance, readily admitting that it hasn’t engaged students in the way it should — a topic we’ve written extensively about. Acknowledging the SA’s previous failures is an important first step to identifying where it can improve. To that end, Sandhu’s proposals to send out summaries of SA work, especially when it comes to dense topics such as constitutional reform, are an actionable way to increase this engagement.
[2/26/2025 8:08 p.m.: A previous version of this article said Nair was McMurtry College first-year representative, not first-year representative and parliamentarian. This article has been corrected.]
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