Editor's Note: The Poly sent a questionnaire to every candidate that had filed to run for GM, PU, and UP prior to Spring break. Below are the unedited responses from GM candidate Zach Nobles '27.

1.Why do you want to be Grand Marshal?

I feel an occasional anxiety–one that I do not believe I am alone in feeling–that RPI should be greater than it is. I mean this in many senses. I have been given the impression in my three years here that RPI’s name used to mean more. Our students used to have more spirit. Our traditions, like too many of the buildings on campus, have decayed from a lack of upkeep.

As Student Life Committee Chair, I have spent a great deal of time trying to convince students to put some faith in their administration. One issue in particular is our good samaritan policy, which protects students from disciplinary action if they call for help in an alcohol- or drug-related emergency. I have been told time and again that students don’t trust it. The Dean of Students Office handles disciplinary action, and they also wrote the good samaritan policy. I know the Dean of Students personally. Dean Ryan is incredibly nice, and from my many interactions with him, it is clear that he is far more interested in harm reduction than punitive action. He has also done his best to promote the good samaritan policy, but there is a culture of deep distrust of the administration that prevents many from taking advantage of it.

This is not without reason. The recent history of the Institute almost seems taboo to talk about publicly, but is necessary context for how we got here. It is discussed openly among students, and I have gleaned that it is discussed even among administrators, but students and administrators do not speak to each other about how much damage the poor management of RPI in the 2000s and 2010s caused. It is an odd phenomenon I have witnessed many times in meetings with admin. We dance around the fact that Dr. Jackson’s administration dealt serious damage to us as a community because we worry that controversy may damage our fledgeling relationship with a new administrative corps.

When I became SLC chair, I had multiple general ideas for projects. We were starting to look into Amicus Properties and we were talking about replacing legal names with preferred names (a battle we are still fighting), but I always had a fixation on a particular thorn in my side: about a decade ago, RPI made a change to the Handbook of Rights and Responsibilities. It stated that demonstrations must be registered with and approved by the Dean of Students Office. During Save the Union, this clause was used to take disciplinary action against students who protested against the administration without approval. And of course, a protest that is approved is not doing much in the way of protesting.

I have not sought to make this change without the input of anyone else; that is what committees are for. However, I have not been secretive in speaking with the Senate Cabinet about my opinions. I want this clause gone. But more than that, I have been looking for over a year for a way for RPI students and administrators to move forward from the distrust. Modification of a clause in the handbook is entirely under the jurisdiction of SLC. Moving forward and rebuilding our community is the job of a Grand Marshal.

This is the crux of what I want to do as a GM that I cannot accomplish as SLC chair. It is not truly the policies that matter. I aim to amend that clause as a matter of principle, but if you are familiar with your Union history, you may have recognized that I misled you somewhat about its enforcement. That clause was used to take disciplinary action against students, but the disciplinary action happened first. The clause was added later to justify it. What actually matters is that the Dean of Students at the time was less amenable to students. I do not believe the current DOSO would attempt to take judicial action under it (though I wouldn’t test it). The problem is that Dean Ryan will retire some day. I hope his successor will be as good as he is, but that cannot be truly guaranteed.

I do seek to change the policies, and I believe that the changes will be more than symbolic. I am currently helping DOSO revise our alcohol and other drug policy, and I have hope that those changes will produce a friendlier RPI for students. That I can do as SLC chair. The lasting change I hope to make as GM will be to foster the growing sentiment that the systems we put in place are meant to serve us. I intend to push for more student involvement in the Trustees’ committees. Students were involved in the selection process for many of our newer administrators, and I think that was productive for RPI as a school. I intend to keep pushing for student-centered Institute policies, so that incoming administrators are introduced to a system that they know primarily intends to serve students. Most of all, I intend to push for an RPI I can be proud of, and I hope to encourage students to be proud of their school as well. I am running for GM because I love RPI, and if you truly love something, you do your best to help it be the best it can.

2. What makes you qualified to be Grand Marshal?

The Grand Marshal has many responsibilities, but the most important one is to be the mouthpiece through which the student body speaks. In that regard, there are few students who have as much experience as I do. I joined SLC in between my freshman and sophomore years, and I was a committee member for a year. As a committee member, I tried my best to solicit concerns about the school from friends and classmates and bring them to Senate to be addressed. It was under my advice that the previous SLC chair reached out to the dean of Student Living and Learning to dispel the many rumors about how the housing selection process worked. I helped compile data for SLC’s push for better accommodations, and I helped revise many of the policies that SLC brought to Senate. As Chair, I have assumed the oversight of these responsibilities. I will spare you a comprehensive list of SLC’s projects, but I put a great deal of my time into making sure the concerns of students are listened to and acted on.

The Grand Marshal also presides over the Senate and deals with many bureaucratic and administrative responsibilities. In this regard, there are very few students who have as much experience as I do. The sheer quantity of councils, committees, and commissions I have been in has anointed me thoroughly with the function of the Senate and the Union as a whole. Again, I will spare you a comprehensive list here, though if you would like to see one, the elections website has an experience field that has it.

3. Name three short-term goals (within your term of office) and three long-term goals (beyond your term of office) that you have for the Student Senate. Within my term of office:

  1. I hope to amend the policies I mentioned earlier. The protest clause is one I would like to discuss, but in a perfect world, I would also like to add presumption of innocence to our judicial process, and amend or remove as many of the restrictions on speech as I can.
  2. I intend to push for credit for some clubs. This was a project AAC worked on last year, but it fell by the wayside due to other projects taking priority and a hurdle with the Registrar’s Office. However, I believe it is doable, and if elected I will encourage my AAC Chair to prioritize it, as well as help them lobby admin for it.
  3. And, the most difficult task: get more people in student government. This requires no cooperation with admin, but we have struggled for members for years now. The Union has a committee on the Playhouse and at least one other commission I know of sitting empty because we never found anyone to chair them. The Playhouse in particular is a sore subject for many, and I am very much aware that the Union simply does not have $2 million in the basement, but I do think the Union could do more to help the Players fundraise in a way that does not put RPI’s 501c(3) status at risk. I will do my best to get enough people involved with the Union for us not to be stretched as thin as we are now.

Beyond my term of office:

  1. I hope that one day, I will stop hearing about people being mistreated by our Title IX Office. Further than that, I have hope that one day students will never have to endure an experience that would necessitate contacting the Title IX Office. It is my greatest failure as SLC Chair that after many student complaints about Title IX violations and poor handling of cases from the Office, we were not able to effect much meaningful change. We did our best to inform students of their rights in the Title IX process, and we encouraged students to reach out to administrators if they have issues, but we have no power to change Title IX policy, which is set by the Code of Federal Regulations. The stories I have heard and continue to hear weigh heavily on my conscience. I am given some hope by the fact that the number of sexual misconduct cases at RPI dropped last year to the lowest number barring COVID since 2015. This is a difficult task for me to wrap my head around, as it’s not something I can affect by changing a clause in some long policy. It is a cultural shift that we can help develop by asserting that we as a community should not and will not accept violence against one another. I hope that Senate’s past resolutions have helped stake that claim, and I will do my best to keep spreading the sentiment.
  2. On a lighter note, I want our school spirit back. I’ve been in the pep band since freshman year, so I have been to a lot of hockey games. Every time I hear someone say “we should bring back the e^x dx chant,” it makes me think they’ve never been to a hockey game, because we say it frequently. Another candidate for GM and I mused recently about trying to make the first home game of the year free for freshmen to try to draw people in. I have thought often about better promoting the hockey line, and some of the major football and lacrosse games. It’s not all sports, either. Many of us in Senate throw out ideas for celebrations of various events that might spark some interest in what’s happening in the Union. I would like to promote those. It is also my hope that credit for clubs will encourage some people to get into clubs that they might have been interested in but just couldn’t get over the initial hurdle of getting involved. Anything that fosters cohesion is a positive.
  3. I think all GM candidates have pipe dreams they don’t promise in their campaigns because they are incredibly unlikely. Mine is students on the Board of Trustees. Union College has two student trustees, and I hate Union. Watching enough RPI hockey will engage you with some vehement rivalries. However, they are doing better than us in this one regard. I have never met any of the Trustees, so I have no idea how receptive they would be to the idea, but it would be a major win for student advocacy?

4. In your own words, what do you feel are the roles of the Grand Marshal and the Senate? Do you think that the current Senate is fulfilling that role? If any, what changes could be made?

I alluded to the GM’s responsibility to preside over the Senate, but that’s the easy one. The main job of the Senate, and the GM by extension, is to be a representative body that advocates for the wants of students. We are okay at this. Like most citizens with the US Congress, most students probably do not know who represents them in Senate, and that’s okay. We are a student government, and the onus is on us to make ourselves visible to students. I do my best to make my position known to people I know, and many SLC projects have stemmed from me asking people I know for their problems and concerns.

We can improve this in multiple ways. First, all senators are required to be members of committees. This requirement is not enforced for all but the most lax of senators, and all members should be encouraged to fulfill their committee requirements. Second, the Senate occasionally sends out news or public service announcements through email or social media, but they are often not seen. Encouraging senators to disseminate information in clubs and organizations they are in and to friends and peers would help with both visibility and our communication problems.

5. What do you think are the incumbent Grand Marshal’s strengths and weaknesses? What are your strengths and weaknesses that could affect the role? What would you do to improve upon them if you are elected?

T has been an effective leader with many good ideas for Senate. He campaigned last year on moving our invitation to speak to the beginning of meetings so that students could express their opinions without waiting through committee reports and motions. This is a good change that very few students use. The Senate has found it profoundly

difficult to get students into meetings to talk about issues, but I believe they have them. By encouraging Senators to disseminate information to their constituents more, I hope to develop a culture of everyone knowing someone in student government. More realistically, a degree of separation between every student and a representative is probably attainable. We are a small school with a large student government. If Senators talk more with other students about the Union, this is probably attainable.

I think I am well suited for this as someone who is well known among clubs I’m in and friend groups as being on Senate. Not everyone knows what we do, but they don’t need to be deep in the stugov weeds to complain to a friend about a problem with a professor or administrator.

6. What does the student-senator relationship look like? What should it look like?

Insufficient at the moment. My answer to the previous question may have been premature. I believe students should not be far removed from their representatives on Senate. I have heard from some students that the student government website is not broadly known to exist, and we could do a better job promoting it. We also do not keep it as up to date as we should, and if elected, I will encourage my cabinet to keep current records of Senators and their contact information.

7. What does the senator-administration relationship currently look like? What should it look like?

These days, pretty good. The senators who really know administrators are the committee chairs, but this term, we have had many administrators from different divisions come to Senate to run ideas for changes by students. They have responded well to senators’ feedback, and we always appreciate hearing what the administration is up to. If anything, I would like to hear from more administrators. Some of the ones closer to student government reach out to Senate, but we could afford to ask about the goings on of the less visible departments.

An improvement I would like to see made is an invitation to committee chairs with topics to discuss at the monthly student leaders meeting. I have been to a couple, and they are one of the easiest ways for senators to gain insight from admin. Combined with more regularly enforced committee requirements, and the chain of information from students to administrators could be much more reliable. Some toying with the advocacy structure may be necessary, but senators and their constituents should never be far removed from the affairs of the Institute.

8. How do you plan to engage with the president of the Institute and the rest of Institute administration?

I have a considerable amount of experience in this area. The President, as far as I can tell, is usually not the person you want. He is the most powerful administrator, but he is also by far the busiest, and unlikely to be as engaged in the minutiae of operations as you might want. Which administrator to work with is very dependent on the particular goal one is striving for. In my experience as a committee chair, most administrators are reasonably responsive to emails. It can take some cajoling, but most are agreeable.

Sometimes public pressure is also needed, as with the petitions on keeping burgers at Commons and the Women’s Leadership Scholarship. In these instances, the Senate does its best to connect students with administrators to demonstrate the will of the people. I think of all the questions, this one poses the least of an issue, so I will not expound any more. We are currently blessed with an administration that doesn’t make us work too hard to engage with them.

9. What qualities should a leader have? How are you a leader?

There is no singular answer to this question. Many very different people have been effective leaders. Perhaps the most necessary quality a leader can have is an ability to know what their peers need. As elected representatives, we work for the people. An effective leader for RPI might need to recognize that our collective identity as a student body is not as strong as it could be. They should probably recognize that our school does not have as strong a reputation as it once did. They should recognize the flaws in the student experience. Most importantly, they would be operating blind if they did not recognize how these came to be.

The Rensselaer Union is unique. An effective leader needs to look forward, but have a keen awareness of the past. They need to understand the failures and successes of the Union and the Institute, and how both have created the Institute as it exists today. Broadly, a leader needs the compassion to recognize their peers’ concerns and the competence to not only address them, but take steps to ensure that problems stay fixed.

Of the two, competence is less difficult to develop. You can spend a couple hours every week in committee meetings and pick up on how to talk to administrators. Insight is harder to gain. I have been in many different clubs. I have talked to many different people, and participated in many different activities. I have been to the Institute archives to learn about our history, and I have pored over the Senate’s archives to better understand the Union. I am certainly not lacking in terms of competence, but my insight makes me an effective leader. There are many things RPI could improve on, and many initiatives I would take on if elected, but they must always be in service to improving the student experience at RPI. I intend to do so.