Project Troy was frequently touted as the previous Student Senate’s largest accomplishment and sometimes used to fight off perceptions that the student government was ineffective. Khaoula Benghanem, the senator in charge of the project, told of a vast coordination between multiple RPI departments and Troy officials in which buses would be run from the Rensselaer Union to downtown Troy on weekends and Troy merchants would offer discounts and coupons to students in order to draw more business. However, recently elected Grand Marshal Mike Dillon has been investigating the effort in the first weeks of his term, and has found that the majority of reports made about the progress of the project were fabrications.
“I don’t know what’s true and what’s not,” said former Grand Marshal Mike Borzumate, who was in office while the project was being worked on. “I was repeatedly assured that progress was being made, that we were on target.”
The revelation was discussed at Monday’s Senate meeting, and multiple resolutions were introduced to censure and reprimand Benghanem, and to remove her from office as Senate-Executive Board liaison. In the end, the Senate passed a resolution rescinding comments she made to The Polytechnic for an article on the project that was published on February 18, 2004.
“There was a lot of emotion, and a lot of senators felt personally wronged,” Dillon said of the meeting.
Benghanem began the meeting by saying that she had been making progress on the project, but had been stopped by RPI politics. She said that many of the promises that had been made to her were then rescinded after budgeting, and that this was the reason behind the different accounts of the project. However, after an hour had passed, she accepted full responsibility and began describing which parts of her reports she had made up, and which were merely uncertain beginnings.
“There were things I didn’t report back to the Senate that maybe I should have. There were things I kept,” she said. “I take full responsibility for everything that was done.”
Senators’ reactions to the discussion ranged from disappointment to anger during the meeting, but most agreed that something had to be done to save whatever efforts had been made, and try to work with people on a new project with the same goals.
“I do trust the senators,” said Dillon, but he continued that now he was going to be forced to check the facts in their reports. Of this incident, he said, “I hate people who lie to me. I’m willing to forgive mistakes, but I feel like she was trying to pull one on me.”
Borzumate said that at every committee chair meeting he called, Benghanem reported steady progress on every issue, citing specific times shuttles were running and specific numbers of businesses signed up for the discount program.
Dillon said that as of last Wednesday, Benghanem was still telling him that the project was on track. She told him that test shuttles were running between the Union and 4th street with an average time of 20 minutes, and that 68 percent of downtown businesses were signed up for the discount program. In addition, she told him that the coupon booklets for student discounts were already being printed by the Institute, and would be ready for distribution in the fall.
When he spoke with Cynthia Smith of the Office of the First-Year Experience, Katrin Wesner of the Health Center, and Allison Newman of Community and Government Relations, Dillon said that they had been working with Benghanem to compile a retraction of the facts she gave the Senate and The Poly, such as the $50,000 grant that was said to have been organized by FYE and the Health Center. Other Institute officials with whom he spoke found it laughable that he believed that it was true, or that they had also been assured that a retraction was in the works.
“We were thrilled that Khaoula and the other students in the Senate created a whole project around this,” said Newman. She said that through her and others’ interactions with Khaoula, some progress had been made and some ideas had been refined, such as when the shuttles would run if they were to be implemented.
Newman and Smith said that most of the ideas that Benghanem told the Senate were being implemented had indeed been discussed, but were still in the preliminary stages. As far as a discount program, they said that many merchants that they had talked to were enthusiastic about such a program, but that no list had been compiled. They said that there were many programs in Troy that involve students, such as festivals, parades, and various community service events.
“We hope that they don’t let it go,” said Newman. “It’s steps in the right direction. We want to see goals like this.”
“In an ideal world, it would be on the agenda of every Senate from now on,” Wesner agreed.
