Undergraduate President: Evan Lazaro

The Polytechnic endorses Evan Lazaro ’21 for undergraduate president. As the incumbent undergraduate president, Lazaro’s contributions to student government this past school year consisted of condensing and enforcing the Undergraduate Council bylaws. This included a budget policy, as the 2019-2020 school year was the first time the UC had a budget. Lazaro has been involved in student government since his freshman year and we hope to see him utilize his experience to bring positive change to the undergraduate council.

Lazaro told The Poly that if he were to be elected, he would push the Class Councils to plan events at the beginning of the semester rather than a week or two in advance. In our interview with Lazaro, he told us that later planning, “doesn’t leave enough time to pass budgets, to advertise, and generally host a well-organized and successful event.” The Poly agrees and thinks earlier planning has the potential to increase the attendance to historically sparsely-attended events. This would also allow students to give valuable feedback well before events happen, and lead to better events overall.

Reflecting on Lazaro’s last term as undergraduate president, The Poly believes most of Lazaro’s shortcomings have been the product of bad luck. For example, the first all-class undergraduate event of the academic year was planned for this semester, but can no longer happen due to the pandemic.

Part of Lazaro’s strategy is to involve vice presidents of the class councils to help train incoming members, which we see as a responsible delegation. However, the undergraduate vice president took a leave of absence in the Spring, leaving the Class of 2023 Council to have to learn on their own more than Lazaro preferred.

Lazaro recognized that currently, “class councils are just general programming boards,” but wishes to change that. In his interview with The Poly, Lazaro also expressed his desire to push class council members to get involved with other aspects of student government: “I think there is a lot more room to actually have them [class council members] represent their class and listen to what issues their classes are facing, represent that to all of student government, and actually have an impact on those issues.”

The Poly supports this idea, as this level of interaction would allow the class councils to generate valuable insight into and for other student government bodies. It would additionally increase the number of people interacting with the student government, further the creation of new ideas, and improve student government overall.

The Poly believes that Lazaro’s ideas will improve the influence and outreach of the UC, and we look forward to seeing him implement these changes if elected by the student body.