This is going to be a great semester. We start this very weekend with RPI vs. Clarkson and then Big Red Freakout! If you do not yet have tickets, you might still have a chance to pick some up from the Field House box office. With Whiteout, the Winter Festival, GM Week, Senior Week, and several other exciting—yet to be announced—events on the way, another 13 weeks of classes don’t look so bad, do they?

For the last year, you’ve read about the new East Campus Athletic Village that is due to be built behind the Field House with construction starting this year. Many of you have come to me and asked, “Why should I care? What does a new varsity sports complex have to do with me?” Well, beyond the obvious improvements to facilities for intramural sports, the ECAV will also positively influence other aspects of campus life. If you’d like a prime example, visit the Mueller Center. By providing additional strength and conditioning facilities, the ECAV will help prevent the madhouse that the Mueller Center will be in the next few weeks. Start with the gym “regulars,” add in spring sports teams who will be doing training and conditioning inside for the warmth, and factor in those people who resolved to get into shape this year, and you’ve got a tremendous strain on the Mueller Center facilities. To those of you planning on working out this semester, it is going to be crowded, and it is going to be a bit crazy. Let’s all be courteous of one another and have some patience. The Mueller Center brought in new equipment over the break to be ready for the additional demand, and I assure you if a cardio machine is broken, the staff is doing everything possible to try to get it fixed by our service contractors.

In the next few weeks, the Union will be completing our budgeting process for the 2007–2008 fiscal year. We began budgeting in November by asking clubs to meet to plan their programs and events for next year and then asked them to propose a budget request based on those activities. I would like to thank all our club officers who contributed their time and effort constructing a sound and justifiable budget for their club’s new and improved activities. Final budgets were due on the last day of classes and have been reviewed for approval during the previous few weeks. This weekend, the eight members of the Executive Board and the Union Administration staff will spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday reviewing every line of the budget for next year. These budgets will include the income and expenses for all Union funded clubs and organizations, our athletics programs, our intramural programs, our business operations, and our facilities. It is not an easy task, but it’s one that will help to improve our student’s experiences for years to come.

For the past two years, under the leadership of Peter Baldwin, the Executive Board budgeted with a global attitude. The main emphasis was to ensure the programs and activities directly supported or benefited the student body as a whole. These attitudes allowed the Union to trim expenses and isolate programs that returned very little value to our campus while allowing the approval of riskier but rewarding programs such as Ruckus and the Red Army. This method of budgeting created greater fiscal responsibility within our clubs and organizations and inspired clubs to revitalize programs that had waned in purpose and popularity. This mentality provides the foundation for the method by which the Executive Board has decided to budget this year.

This year we will be looking at not only the impact and return that a program or activity provides to you as a student, but we will also focus on the quality and originality of those programs. Our mandate is that we not only provide support for a wide variety of interests, activities, and services, but that we do so in a manner that enriches you as a person and as a fellow student.