We couldn’t be more honored to be running for Student Body President and Vice President. With our combined 5 years of internal SGA experience and external SGA outlook through extracurriculars such as the Korean Undergraduate Student Association, Ramblin Reck Club, GT Tour Guides, Campus Outreach, Journey Christian Fellowship, Phi Mu and more, you won’t find a more balanced and involved ticket on the ballot!

With a lot of brainstorming and a thumbs up from Dean Stein, we have narrowed our vision for campus into three main components: Transparency, Safety and Inclusivity.

We decided to narrow our promise to three over arching platforms because we don’t want to address campus issues at a surface level. We want to make a promise that we can deliver. As representatives of the undergraduate student body, we look forward to advocating for student driven initiatives and believe that our condensed platform will provide us the freedom to do just that.

Of our three platforms, transparency is our priority because we believe that SGA is of the students, for the students and by the students. This means that unless the student body knows exactly what SGA does, and in turn, is able to clearly express their voice, we as SGA are failing to do what we were originally created to do. By improving transparency, we hope to make SGA more efficient and effective in representing the student opinion and the funding process, working to empower the student organizations and to improve the student experience.

Some ideas we have in increasing transparency is to use SGA committees to reach out to different student organizations. We also want to instill the intent and purpose of SGA starting with our freshman Yellow Jackets, by reaching out to them through Georgia Tech mandated avenues such as GT 1000 classes FASET. Furthermore, we want to be proactive in gaining student feedback, and some ideas we have to do that are approval ratings of the President/SGA and a mid-year survey that will be sent out to gauge student concerns on campus and to directly receive feedback.

Safety includes more than just late night transportation and creation of safe spaces. Safety also includes the wellbeing of our fellow students. We strive to put student mental health at the forefront of this Institute’s priorities, making sure that students can take part in the creation of more mental health resources and of safe spaces in the student center re(in)novation process.

Under inclusivity, our goal is to embrace Tech’s diversity in backgrounds, beliefs and talents by partnering with different student organizations on campus to foster cross cultural and organizational events. We believe that committees under the executive branch should be more focused on reaching out to different student organizations on campus so that SGA can partner with them to make an impact on campus. SGA should not be the event planners and holders; SGA should be fostering and encouraging student involvement. So no matter your race, background, or passion, whether you are greek or non-greek, East or West Campus, everyone should have the same voice and ability to do what they enjoy throughout their time here.

We want to take a moment to thank all of you for making this campaign not only memorable, but enjoyable. We love Georgia Tech, we love our Yellow Jackets, and we have loved having the opportunity to pay it forward! While we would deeply appreciate your vote come April 8th, we value an educated vote even more! So we encourage you to explore your options and to learn more about what we stand for by visiting www.BrianMegan2016.com.

Together we can put the ‘us’ back in ‘campus.’

In Disney Pixar’s movie “Inside Out,” the protagonist, Riley, moves to San Francisco with her parents, turning her world upside down. At first, her emotions disagree about how to handle this change; however, the emotions learn to embrace their differences to help Riley adapt into this new town. They realize that their differences are their greatest strength. This powerful message was a part of the inspiration for our campaign motto, #gtinsideout. The idea of working from the inside out is how we plan to institute a positive cultural change on campus and how we plan on celebrating our differences as an Institute. By using our experiences and interactions with the entire student body, we can represent your interests and make real changes through avenues that have not been utilized in the past.

It’s true — we do not have more SGA experience than other tickets. But we aren’t running from that; we are embracing it. We know the procedural structures and guidelines of the organization, and we believe we can bring a new perspective to an organization that does things the same way every year.

We plan to advance the organization by using existing resources and foundations, but also implementing new ones where there is void, to tackle campus issues in a more comprehensive manner. It is not just a question of athletes versus non-athletes, Greek versus non-Greek, mental health resources versus the lack thereof, etc. that we should be contemplating, but how multiple aspects of student life interact to create the student experience at Tech. In our platform, we pay special attention to where wellness, transparency and campus communities overlap. We want to address these issues at their roots with the complex solutions they need, instead of sticking a temporary band aid over the situation. This is why our platform includes specific and tangible action items that we can accomplish to take steps toward progress. We hope to  lay the foundation for a positive culture change at Georgia Tech. This doesn’t happen overnight, and we recognize that. But we can begin now by making some changes on our campus that will have an even longer-lasting impact for future generations of Yellow Jackets.

We are so excited to be running for Student Body President and Vice President. We hope to represent you, the entirety of the student body, and facilitate the changes and tackle the problems you are passionate about during our time in SGA. We plan to use our experiences in leadership and involvement from all over campus to tackle SGA from a new perspective that hasn’t been done in the past.

We love Georgia Tech and our Yellow Jacket community, but we also realize that there are problems or struggles that our campus faces that we can tackle. Join us in our journey to embrace everything this Institute has to offer. Let’s make Georgia Tech even better, from the inside out.

We’re both honored and humbled by the opportunity to campaign to be your Student Body President and Executive Vice President. We President’s Cabinet as VP of Internal Affairs and VP of Communications respectively. This gives us a great understanding of the intricacies of SGA and extensive experience working with faculty, staff and administration to deal with a range of campus issues. The tagline of the campaign is “We Are Tech,” which embodies the fact that we have worked with a number of different student communities across campus to develop this platform and would like to continue to work with these students if elected. Our campaign aims to serve students and student organizations by connecting them with the resources they need to be successful.

The platform focuses on seven tenants. We have highlighted some of those points below.

Mental Health: We want to focus on working with the newly formed Center for Community Health and Wellbeing to rollout a wellness survey to asses the state of mental health on campus. One of the programs we envision coming out of this survey is the “Innovator” program that will train student leaders in different mental health resources on campus to help them deal with the everyday mental stresses of their members.

Campus safety: We want to ensure the safety and security of all students on campus, primarily in the area of late night campus transportation. Currently, there are not enough Stingerettes to meet the demand of students who use them, which makes safe transportation difficult. We plan on working with Parking and Transportation to form a partnership with Uber as a supplement to the current Stingerette system.

Academics: Study space for students will be a growing problem as parts of the library are closed and plans for a new Student Center are forthcoming. It is already hard enough to find study space in Clough, especially if you are in a group. We plan on working with administration to open up study space in buildings that go unused at night for organizations, group study and individual study. This issue needs to be addressed before it becomes an even bigger problem.

Empowering Students: In the past year, a lot of controversial issues have come up on our campus ranging from discrimination to tensions with the state legislature. We want to give students an opportunity to voice their concerns about anything they feel is an issue on campus by implementing a system similar to that of whitehouse.gov and of BART (Bias Assessment Response Team) from Ohio State. Students will be able to start a petition, amass signatures and have the petition discussed and voted on should it reach a certain threshold. If this petition passes, we will work with the administration to address the concern and deal with it in a satisfactory manner.

Our campaign has been a year’s work in progress. We’ve met with numerous administrators and student leaders across campus to give you a platform that is both comprehensive and achievable. This campaign is much more than providing a new perspective on campus issues or having the most experience, it is about who is most prepared to take on this role for the next year. This platform was created to empower students, so feel free to reach out to us!

In 1976, the U.S. government passed the “Government in the Sunshine Act.” It’s one of many Freedom of Information Acts in this country, but its specific purpose is to make most meetings and records (as well as other official actions) of government agencies open to the public. If you know anything about or know anyone involved in journalism, you know that so-called “Sunshine Laws” are a sort of gospel in the field; anyone with questions about the activities of a governmental body — and yes, that catchall includes public universities — can use Sunshine Laws to enforce transparency.

Part of the Sunshine Law toolkit in Georgia are documents called Open Records Requests (ORRs), which are exactly what they sound like in that they allow reporters to request certain records from state agencies. As the state law reads currently, agencies have three days from receipt of the request to either produce the requested documents or provide a reasonable timeline for when the documents will actually be received.

Senate Bill 323, which is currently awaiting Governor Deal’s attention, would create an exception to this rule that hits particularly close to home for Tech students.

The main body of the bill alters the law by allowing certain projects to withhold documents from the public until a binding commitment to build it is issued by the Department of Economic Development. This, while troubling and problematic to me, is pretty obviously not the exception that screams “TECH STUDENTS SHOULD HEAR ABOUT THIS.”

The exception to which I’m referring takes the form of an amendment to SB 323 which was introduced by State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, pertaining specifically to universities’ athletic departments. Should this legislation pass, athletic departments would have 90 days to respond to an ORR.

I don’t pretend to know a great deal about how athletic departments operate, nor do I pretend in any capacity to be a “real” journalist who works with ORRs constantly. As a news junkie who has long appreciated the value of investigative journalism, however, I have to say that this rubs me the wrong way in both sentiment and execution.

The arguments for this legislation are a strange amalgamation of claims that our athletic departments are at a disadvantage in recruiting because we enforce a tight timetable on ORRs; Rep. Erhart, for example, noted in debate that “[this] just allows us to play on the same field as Alabama and everybody else” insofar as ORRs slowing down the recruiting process.

After consulting with the Technique’s Harsha Sridhar, my Sports Editor colleague, I’ve concluded that this is just patently untrue. Recruitment reporters seldom use ORRs, so to say — as Rep. Ehrhart has — that “at that recruiting time of year [administrations] get absolutely inundated with people wanting to have that recruiting information” without the capacity to handle them is misguided at best. Most information about who is considering which schools can be gleaned from coaches and students themselves by any curious party.

The comparison to Alabama’s system is furthermore faulty since top rivals to Georgia teams operate in states with similarly stringent turnarounds. South Carolina requires a response within 15 days and Tennessee and Mississippi (among others) require one in 10, so while Alabama’s vague guidelines are indeed more lenient they are the exception and not the rule.

In addition, this amendment applies to all intercollegiate athletic documents, including potentially-tricky information like contracts and NCAA complaints. If the problem were really in recruitment documents, this language would not be in the legislation. In a shocking turn of events, it might even have been debated over the course of days and
included in more relevant legislation instead of breezing through the Senate as a midnight amendment.

Barring the press from having access to public information in a timely manner is an effective castration. ORRs in sports are meant to be used to discover anything from violations of NCAA policy to exactly where student and taxpayer money is going. Three months is more than enough time for changes to be made in contract language and similar documents, should the need arise to obfuscate wrongdoing; a matter of great interest can, in three months, fall to the bottom of the stack and no longer be relevant.

Anyone can complete an ORR and pay the fees and send it off and wait, but the average Joe never will. Those Joes can either live in willful ignorance or turn to investigative reporting with the questions ORRs are designed to answer. The latter’s inability to do its job is only an open invitation for the former to take hold.

Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle said, after voting on the amendment finished in the Senate, that he hopes this will bring a national championship to the state of Georgia.

Don’t get me wrong: I would love, with all of my heart, to see that happen. I would love even more for that Georgia school to be our very own institution, obviously, but this bill will not get us any closer to that starry-eyed daydream.

This legislation is not about improving Georgia’s athletic programs. This is, plain and simple, about restricting the public’s access to documents which are rightfully theirs to review. I earnestly do not know if this was a misguided attempt at helping athletic depart-
ments keep on top of things, or if it was designed to offer more nefarious protections.
In a month that was dominated by the wild escapades of the Georgia Legislature, I wish there was more room for discussion of SB 323.

What I do know is this: I would far rather root for a team lackluster in performance but verifiably honest than winners who cower under the protection of a 90-day free-for all.

Messi or Ronaldo? It’s a question we’ve been asking for decades, perhaps even years. Whether you side with the diminutive Argentinian or you prefer the more physical presence of the Portuguese star, there is an argument to be made.

I take that back. There isn’t an argument to be made if you’re a Ronaldo fan. Why? Because you’re wrong. Not just wrong as in, “I think you should have carried the two,” but wrong as in, “You just suggested that the moon isn’t made of cheese.”

The sorts of people who think that Ronaldo is the finest the world has to offer also probably think that the moon landing was real, or that the President of the United States doesn’t report to an Illuminati Council on a monthly basis. Because it’s the truth.

The last time we at the Techlique made this comparison, we took what I like to call a ‘mathy’ approach. We used decimals, numbers and integers, we took out our abaci and crunched the statistics, and we reported our findings.

Obviously, I wasn’t in charge of writing that article, because you and I both know that such a ridiculous approach is way off base. (I know that referring to baseball here may be confusing, but we’re talking about European football. Stick with me!)

This time, we’re going to take a more ‘feely’ approach to determining whether Messi is indeed the finest footballer, or if the Pride of Portugal should come out on top. Let’s begin.

Dribbling: Just watch them on the pitch. Messi just puts so much passion into his dribbling. Watching him work a defender is akin to watching Van Gogh write a concerto, Amadeus-style. Angels cry at its beauty.

Meanwhile, Ronaldo is nothing special. Sure, he runs down the length of the field with the ball, but so does everyone and their grandmother. I’d give him a 5/10, but like I said, this is not the time nor the place for numbers, real or imaginary.

Shooting: Remember when I said we weren’t going to use numbers? Well, it turns out we are, because it’s the only way to do the great Messi justice. He’s an 11/10. Ronaldo doesn’t get a number. He sucks.

FIFA 12 stats: Ronaldo wins this one. Playing with Ronaldo is cheating. That just means he’s bad at real life. Because I say so.

And that’s how the cookie crumbles, folks! Messi wins, best two of three. Undeniable.

Disclaimer: This is part of our April Fool’s wraparound and is in no way factual. Ronaldo is obviously better than Messi.

Straugh Mann, a first-semester ME, says that when he tells other people he studies mechanical engineering, he gets what he calls “the glance.”

More specifically, Mann says that he gets “the sort of disinterested glance that kinda shows that you’ve heard what the other person said but you don’t really care.” Mann elaborated, “It just feels like when I mention my major nobody really cares. It’s really depressing to feel like you aren’t important. I feel like my work deserves more than just a glance.”

When other ME students were asked how they felt about this sort of situation, their responses were mixed. Some students’ responses were as short as “What are you talking about?” or “Excuse me, you’re in my way.” One particular student noted that “Dude, you woke me up. I was taking a power nap.” All of the responses seemed to indicate that ME students either did not care or were unaware of their own recognition problems.

Tech’s Mechanical Engineering program is ranked #2 nationally, behind MIT, and is known for its particularly rigorous academics. It has been a program at Tech since 1885, when the school was established, and is the largest department in the College of Engineering, as well as the largest program on Tech’s campus.

The size of the ME program makes it especially vital for ME students to recognize their own worth, as a substantial portion of the student body is located within the ME program. “There’s definitely a need to be aware of our own achievements,” said Mann, “There are just so many of us. If we ignore ourselves, that’s a pretty big part of the student body making us feel left out.”

The size of the ME program presents a major obstacle to recognition on campus, as many students in the ME program are unaware of their own need to recognize themselves and one another in meaningful ways. Mann suggested that ME majors should provide more substantial recognition to one another and always remember to inform others about their enrollment in the ME program in an effort to overcome this obstacle.

Perhaps it is time for ME majors to take a second look at their fellow ME students and make that extra effort to be excited when someone mentions for the 12th time this hour that they are, in fact, an ME major. Hopefully, this effort will improve the status of the ME program among its own students, thereby improving its recognition in the broader student body.

Disclaimer: This is part of our April Fool’s wraparound and is in no way factual.

Due to an unfortunate mix-up between Amazon.com, global e-commerce vendor, and the Amazon Conservation Association, Tech Square will receive a rainforest biome before the end of the semester.

“I’ll be 100 percent honest here, I don’t think anyone actually checked the paperwork before they issued the press release,” said Toucan Sam, Public Relations officer with the Amazon Conservation Association.

“Does it really make more sense for an online shopping giant that’s been responsible for the closure of thousands of brick-and-mortar, mom-and-pop stores to open something on a college campus? No, it doesn’t.”

AmazonRainforest@Tech, as the space will officially be called, will begin construction April 1. The roof of the building formerly home to a small Walmart location will be removed and replaced with a glass half-dome.

Temperatures in the dome will be kept at a swarthy 80.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and humidity will remain at approximately 75 percent with the use of unique water spray nozzles located throughout the building.

“We’re releasing an enormous amount of butterflies in there. Just a ludicrous amount,” Sam said. Indeed, preliminary construction plans indicate that 5,000 butterflies will be released in the dome initially, with the expectation that many will die but more will reproduce.

AmazonRainforest@Tech will also be home to several species of bird, as well as a sloth and multiple giant wasps.

Rumors continue to swirl over the possibility of a mock river being installed in the building’s floor. This will be the second man-made river on Tech’s campus.

“While I don’t have an official comment, I can say that we have to put the piranhas somewhere,” Sam said.

Tech students will not be able to return or pick up any Amazon.com products at the new AmazonRainforest@Tech location; however, the likelihood of packages brought to the location disappearing forever is fairly high.

It’s quiet simple really; as long as Tech exists, there must be construction on campus, preferably in the least convenient location possible.  The current least convenient place for about half of campus and anyone craving food from Highland Bakery is the area around Tech Tower, which has resulted in the registrar being moved to the Savant Building.

Readers, I urge you to remain calm; this writer investigated the real reason Tech Tower is so unnecessarily being renovated: aliens. Students have been suspicious for years about mysterious lights on campus and strange behavior of their peers; these sightings and behaviors often align with the most stressful times of the semester, an obviously uncorrelated fact. What else causes these symptoms? Alien sightings. The only logical place for these aliens to call home? Tech Tower.

The so-called “renovation” of one of Tech’s most iconic buildings began in the Fall 2015 semester and is supposedly a thorough revamping the building’s heating, cooling, and electrical systems as well as a redo of the plumbing throughout the Tower. Anyone who’s been in any other building on campus knows that there are many other buildings that could use a revamp of facilities, piping and HVAC systems. It can be safely assumed that these knowledgeable aliens have decided to return home after years of living at Tech, and that the Tech Tower we’re walking past today may be entirely different from the Tech Tower we knew until construction began. So until Tech Tower’s “renovations” are over, be sure to keep an eye on the sky; when you see a rocket shooting off into space, know its our friends from a different world returning home and be sure to adjust that tinfoil hat on your head.

While the on campus dining option of Woodruff, colloquially known as Woody’s, is by no means a new addition to campus (the building opened in 1984), it is perhaps one of the most overlooked options.

With ten separate kitchens to choose from, there is no lack of options when one finds himself or herself in need of sustenance, but it might be a little while before a cook deigns toappear.

The food of this fine establishments varies wildly, and it is not terribly infrequent for the inexperienced cooks to set off the fire alarm, warranting the evacuation of both wings as well as the attached dining hall, which might be a safer, less adventurous alternative.This terrible lack of cooking experience among its chefs has not, by any means, deterred Woodruff from remaining open to students for over three decades, and since they are neither held to the standards of the United States Food and Drug Administration nor receive a public health inspection score, this is unlikely to change in future regardless of the food’s quality.

While the kitchen, with its unadorned walls and an intimidating refrigerator that takes up a large portion of the floor space, is by no means the most attractive or ideal dining area, the cooks might be offended if their diners abscond with their food to find a more appealing atmosphere in which to eat. For this reason, it is recommendable to bring one’s own decoration or, at the very least, a few good conversation topics.

One of the most innovative advances of the restaurant in Woodruff North and South is that there is no posted menu. This, foreseeably, has the down side of there being no regulation on the prices of the food, allowing each individual cook to set their own bill.

Many of the cooks, most of whom have little to no experience in this profession, claim that their food is not for sale and some even venture further into the surreal and state that they are not, in fact, chefs but students attempting to become engineers.

Despite their refusal to acknowledge their restaurant status, it is still quite possible, with enough perseverance, for one to obtain food from the Woodruff kitchens. One must simply befriend the cooks and realize that payment will not take a monetary form — usually being lively conversation, good company and perhaps an offer to do the dishes.

It is worth noting that the quality of food is not linked at all to the normally low pricing. Even though the quality of the offered food ranges wildly from mere sustenance to nigh gourmet dishes, whatever the lottery offers is often appreciated by the eager and hungry college crowd.

With its lack of formality and laid-back schedule, the dining at Woodruff North and Woodruff South is a fun and diverse choice for food, but it is also a bit risky for patrons to count on as there is no guarantee there being edible food exactly when needed.

Because of this, it is advisable to bring something to work on, such as homework if one wishes to be productive or a deck of cards for fun, and camp out in the spacious lounge area, located just down the hall from each of the restaurant’s ten kitchens.

From these lounges, one can easily hear when a chef arrives and begins to noisily prepare the food. At this point, a potential patrons should wrap up whatever they have occupied the wait time with and timidly approach the cook, slyly slipping into the conversation that they are a little hungry.

Disclaimer: This is part of our April Fool’s wraparound and is in no way factual.