How exactly can students make a difference on campus? Is there anything that students who care about MIT can do to influence Institute policy? There are concrete things the new Undergraduate Association leadership can — and should — do to enhance the student experience.

In 2010, back in my home, New York, I worked with a local grassroots organization to advocate for legalizing same-sex marriage. My organization and I went up to Albany to speak with legislators personally, worked to rally protestors in the suburban and conservative towns of New York, and took every opportunity we had to educate strangers about what the legalization of marriage of a man with a man, and a woman with a woman, meant.

For too long have we viewed the MIT community as being artificially demarcated by the labels of “undergraduate” or “graduate.” Instead of dividing issues between our constituencies in the year to come, we propose an approach that leverages a shared set of priorities to solve our common problems. Today we present a vision which bridges the artificial boundaries of undergraduate, graduate, post-doc, faculty, and staff. This is the vision of a single community driving MIT forward, and not the monolith of MIT servicing disparate communities.