Fired up, ready to go.

This simple phrase inspired by the campaigns of President Barack Obama became the mantra of our next Student Association president Boris Gresely when he announced his candidacy two months ago.

And after spending an hour with the passionate Syracuse University junior in Café Kubal, pouring over his red journal of notes and listening to him speak in streams of ideas, fired up was exactly how I felt.

Gresely’s campaign was a premeditated action that has been developing unofficially since the loss of his adviser Iggy Nava’s run for the SA presidency nearly a year ago. When Gresely won, after a final week of grassroots on the ground campaigning, the men cried together.

Though the excitement of Gresely’s team has yet to settle, a reality is sinking in for the president-elect: The road ahead will be anything but easy, and there is much more to the presidency than a successful campaign.

Gresely faces the major task of pulling SA out of the rut of ineffectiveness the organization has found itself consistently sliding into. Yet with ideas radically different compared to the association’s norms, he might be just the right student to do it. Clearly 1,764 of his peers think so.

Instead of running on a campaign of three major initiatives like his opponents, Gresely will head into office on the platform of a three-phase SA makeover. He said his “reform, reconnect and redirect” action plan will hopefully coincide with the three semesters he will be leading the organization due to term code changes.

Day one of his term will launch the implementation of the reform phase, Gresely said.

Through a series of proposed restructuring-centered legislation — which Gresely has been conceptualizing with the advisement of Parliamentarian Ben Jones — Gresely hopes the assembly will pass his three-branch vision into the SA codes.

Gresely believes by modeling SA after the American federal government style rather than a parliamentary system, the roles of both the top SA officials and the assembly will be more effective. He particularly wants to give more power and autonomy to the underutilized, yet eager, assembly — an action which has been desperately in order for the past three sessions.

Coming from outside the association, an arguable strength, Gresely is now working to form ties and build respect with the current association members.

Despite ideological differences, we are all on the same team and are working toward the same goals, Gresely said. “I am not an enemy,” he said. This concept of unity was absent throughout the past year’s fragmented session, which estranged many student leaders from the administration including Gresely himself who previously served in the assembly.

Reforming SA is both internal and external in Gresely’s opinion — an outlook that must be overwhelmingly shared by the entirety of the organization.

With this concept in mind, Gresely is focused on keeping the organization accountable. He plans to host summits to gather the strengths and hear the concerns of student leaders outside SA. Pledging to keep the press accurately informed, conducting internal reviews of progress and holding frequent advising sessions are all components of Gresely’s potential formula to success.

As Gresely speaks, it is hard to not be swept away in his wave of passion for the presidency. And though just for a moment I feel my feet start to slip from beneath me, I stop fast and firmly plant them as memories of unfulfilled presidential promises flood my mind.

Students ask what the point of SA is. The night of the election, my Twitter feed displayed countless posts asking if the organization really does anything at all. Gresely seems to realize what SA can be. But he will have to prove it to his peers before another wave crashes on a wrecked SA president washed to shore.

Rachael Barillari is a senior political science and Middle Eastern studies major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at rebarill@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @R_Barillari.

Published on November 21, 2013 at 2:34 am