Kyle Coleman climbed the stairs of Carnegie Library on Wednesday morning and looked down at a small, intimate crowd of about 20 friends as he announced that he will run for Student Association president.

When he began his speech, Coleman said he didn’t want the announcement to be a large event, but rather one with his closest friends.

“You’re here at the starting line, and you’ll be here at the finish line,” he said.

During the brief, five-minute announcement, several passers-by looked on with interest, and others stopped to hear what Coleman, who is the third candidate to officially enter the SA presidential race, had to say.

The junior, who is majoring in finance, information management and technology, accounting and economics, announced his campaign at 11:20 a.m. 

Coleman, an assembly representative and member of the Finance Board, said he wanted to run because he didn’t like the direction SA was going in.

“I decided this year that I didn’t like what was going on, and I wanted to change it,” he said. “And I felt out of the people who weren’t running, I had the best shot to change it.”

Besides being involved with SA, Coleman said he is a resident adviser and participates in a few academic fraternities and the economics club.

Even though he is taking seven classes this semester to complete his four majors, Coleman said the more involved he gets on campus, the better his grades are.

He said having leadership experience outside of SA differentiates him from the other candidates currently in the race. Last year, he said, he started the ‘Cuse vs. Cancer 5K, and got 100 people to participate. The same event this year had an attendance of about 200, he said.

“You’ll see a lot of people talk about their SA experience,” he said. “But that’s all structured; that’s just a job you’re in.” 

Coleman said his campaign platform revolves around three key issues: safety, addressing segregation on campus and restructuring SA to be more results-based.

The issue of segregation on several levels is prevalent on campus, he said, but something that’s often ignored.

“It’s sort of like a little secret that nobody will say,” he said.

Coleman acknowledged that there’s no one solution to this problem and it’s not something that can be solved overnight. But SA should work to create a dialogue on campus by contacting as many students as possible to get their input, he said.

Though SA presidents do not have a background in public safety, he or she should address any issues regarding this publicly, Coleman said. This way, the organization could get as many opinions as possible — not just those of the SA president and chief of the Department of Public Safety, he said.

If elected, Coleman said, he’d make SA structured around results. In this system, number of office hours held would not take precedence over initiatives completed on campus, he said, which is how the current system is structured.

In this respect, his platform is similar to that of former SA President Neal Casey, who gave Coleman the petition to join SA. This system would not be intended to simply be punitive, but rather, to reward members who are completing projects that help the student body, he said.

SA elections run Nov. 12 to Nov. 15.

– Asst. News Editor Casey Fabris contributed reporting to this article.

Published on October 17, 2012 at 11:40 am

Contact Dylan: dmsegelb@syr.edu | @dylan_segelbaum