Rhonda Wilson, accounting and finance senior

Arizona Daily Wildcat

Resident Assistant at La Paz Hall 1995-96; Orientation leader 1995-96; Chimes Junior Honorary 1995-96

Wilson said it took her a long time to decide whether to run again because she had to make sure she had the dedication to do it for another year. She said she feels the same way about the position and the role and the potential of the role as she did a year ago. Wilson said she feels the student body needs a president who will get out and talk to different parts of the student body and relay students' feelings to the administration, campus community, Arizona Board of Regents and all the other people involved with the UA.

Wilson said she is excited about running again because she thinks she can offer more as a second-term president. She said a lot of the time in the first year is spent learning and she has already created strong relationships with administrators.

Wilson said she wants to make sure students are a priority of the administration. Specifically, she said she would like to bring the Student Union project to completion. Wilson said she wants to make sure the university gets through all of the steps before the end of next year and that the financial structure for the Union is fair and affordable to students. She said that if there has to be a student fee to pay for the union, it needs to be affordable to students and that a student fee board needs to be established to make sure students are checking where the money is going.

Wilson also said she wants to see if more money can be allocated to improving classrooms and speeding up the renovation process.

She said she also wants to launch a student traditions campaign to enhance the individual traditions. She said there are a lot of students activities and organizations that are running into trouble. She said the university needs to come together to support those traditions, such as the yearbook.

Another of Wilson's issue is keeping tuition and the cost of attendance affordable and making sure students know exactly where their money is going. She said she wants to work hard to get a work-study bill in place and work with ASA to come up with more ideas for student financial aid.

5Wilson said the university has a serious parking problem and ASUA needs to tackle the problem this year. She said she thinks the approach to take with parking is to get the key administrators at the university to sit down and discuss the issue. She said she is not sure if more parking structures or surface lots are needed, but more spaces are needed that are closer to campus because the farther away the spaces are, the closer they touch into campus safety issues. She said ASUA also needs to look into Parking and Transportation Service's budget to see if students need to be charged so much.

(See above for Wilson's discussion on tuition and the Student Union.)