ByAnna VidergarandEmilia Wisniewski
Executive Board slates Fight to BU and BeYOU discussed issues of mental health and sexual assault prevention in a StuGov debate Tuesday night as election weekend fast approaches.
Both slates elaborated on their sexual assault plans and their relationships with Greek Life following Fight to BU’s recentannouncementthat it cut ties with the fraternity Delta Tau Delta, its own E-Board members included.
The debate opened with the moderator asking candidates how their slates plan to improve upon BU’s mental health system.
Saahithi Achanta, BeYOU’s executive vice presidential candidate and a sophomore in the College of General Studies, responded first, focusing on Student Health Services.
“We see that they’re overworked, and we see that they have a lot of incoming students that need resources, but SHS just does not have the facilities to give it to them,” Achanta said. “This is why we want to implement peer counseling as a way for students to have more intimate conversations with students who have been through their experiences before.”
BeYOU also plans to commit to providing therapy dogs during finals season, partner with FitRec to provide affordable fitness programs and work with local gyms and yoga studios to discount admission prices in an effort to addressstudent life, mental health included, on campus.
Fight to BU highlighted the relationship between academics and mental health on campus, with Navya Kotturu, the slate’s executive vice presidential candidate and a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, saying the two “go hand in hand.”
“We go to an institution that is incredibly rigorous, and we need to be able to prioritize our mental health,” Kotturu said. “In order to do so, we need to make sure that students have access to resources at SHS.”
Kotturu said she has been working on a peer counseling program since the summer of 2021 and announced during the debate that a pilot program is slated to be launched next fall.
Both slates then shared extensive plans to prevent sexual assault on campus.
BeYOU plans to allow for more conversations to lead change, focusing on allowing the discussion to be led by survivors’ stories and experiences.
“I’ve heard real stories from my friends, the people closest to me going through situations that nobody should be going through,” said Katelyn Lee, BeYOU’s vice presidential candidate of finance and sophomore in CGS. “This is not an issue we should be addressing only when it comes up. This is an issue that shouldn’t be an issue in the first place.”
Achanta further bolstered BeYOU’s sexual assault platform by underlining the concrete steps of making the changes a reality.
“We will have training specifically for people that are working on gathering feedback for sexual assault,” Achanta said. “We want to talk about the things that we’re actually doing to prevent sexual assault on campus to make sure that there are less survivors.”
Fight to BU’s Kotturu said sexual assault advocacy and prevention is “one of the most important parts” of their platform and plan to collaborate with student organizations to improve outreach. The slate’splatformoutlines support for drafting a survivor’s bill of rights, partnership with leaders in Greek Life and promotion of Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April.
Fight to BU’s discussion of sexual assault prevention followed astatementreleased by the slate the day before the debate in which it announced it was cutting ties with anyone affiliated with Delta Tau Delta on its campaign following “allegations” about the fraternity.
The statement was announcedconcurrentlywith the removal of Delta Tau Delta president Micah Borkan from the campaign as vice president of finance. Borkan was replaced by Lauren Kong, a freshman in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.
In the same statement, Fight to BU proposed a new cabinet position in StuGov’s executive branch focusing on sexual assault advocacy.
“We have a number of different approaches and initiatives meant to address the culture that we have on our campus,” said Dhruv Kapadia, Fight to BU’s presidential candidate and CAS sophomore. “This was the information that we received from brave student leaders, we decided to act on it and we think we’ve done the best in our ability to protect survivors and to stand with them.”
Discussions around Greek Life were further explored by both slates in tandem with the sexual assault prevention debate.
Fight to BU’s Kotturu said the slate has many connections to Greek Life organizations and that they plan to utilize those relationships to further change on campus, especially regarding sexual assault prevention.
“There’s different aspects of Greek Life that we need to have connections to and we’re fortunate enough to have those connections that we hope to use to facilitate these conversations and create change,” Kotturu said.
Kapadia added that cultural changes on campus regarding sexual assault do not only need to happen in Greek life.
BeYOU’s Achanta said the slate wants to use its Greek Life connections to support the BU community beyond sexual assault, such as philanthropy.
“We want to make sure that we aren’t giving any bias to Greek Life at all in student government,” said Achanta, a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. “We want to make sure that we’re a non-partial organization which is able to utilize its contacts in Greek life to the best of our ability.”
Voting for StuGov begins March 28 on the Student Link. More information on each platform is availablehere.
