When self-described global citizen Alvira Khan showed up at the doorsteps of FAU three years ago, she had a vision of what campus life was supposed to look like. She says she thought it would be a multicultural place, like what she saw on FAU’s website. As a half French and half English student, and as a twenty-two year old who has moved too many times to count, she says she thought she could find a home here with kindred spirits.
She found, however, that students didn’t have a place to gather, didn’t know there was a gathering, or didn’t intermingle between different groups. One of Khan’s goals when she is sworn in as student body president for the 2004-2005 school year on May 3 will be to create these meeting places for students, and to further interaction between various cultures.
“One thing I see is that we do have a lot of programs that are diverse,” Khan says, “but they only tend to attract people that are a part of that culture. We need to grab everyone that we can get to learn about the cultures so that we have a salad bowl of people coming to enjoy these events, instead of just being together with your own people.”
One way Khan plans to implement programs that encourage interaction is the creation of a cyber cafe at the University Center. “It’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all year and we’re actually trying to get an architectural student to come and design it, to make it look like more of a living room, to make it more comfortable,” she says. ” I want the UC to be somebody’s home away from home.”
She says she hopes that by providing new gathering places that feel welcoming, students that come from other states and countries will leave their dorms and feel a part of FAU campus life. “Mickey” Dutes, the newly elected Vice President, also feels “there’s no recreation for the students.” He has questions like, “Why are we building dorms where students have nowhere to go? What happens to these students?”
Both Dutes and Khan want to make changes so that FAU students are proud to be here.
Khan also wants to continue holding events that cater to students. She says the reggae band Student Government brought to play in the Breezeway was one such event that brought everyone together.
The challenge remains a marketing one, she says. “Students aren’t aware, they just walk down the Breezeway, and don’t look at all these flyers,” Khan adds. “We just need to use our media more. We have OWL Radio, OWL TV and the University Press, so the potential is there.”
She hopes to use OWL TV in particular to bring together all the different campuses. She says that once they are able to tell people through the media of all that is occurring, that students would participate, but it is a matter of creating what she calls “a marriage of the campuses.” Students need to start thinking that they attend FAU, not this campus or that one. She hopes to set up TVs in cafeterias and other public areas to bring this awareness and togetherness.
The top priority for Khan is to “serve the needs of the students” and she says continuing her violence awareness program is something that students need. She wants to make it an extensive program, to branch out to other agencies, and to do what is necessary to prevent date rape on campus.
She credits her team, a multicultural Student Government that she says is “like [her] family” in starting this program and others, like the Honor Code academics. “We will continue what we started,” she says. Continuing initiatives that exiting President Ancel Pratt began, like the Readership Program, is also on their agenda.
She SG family is the reason she says that she has made it this far. “It was never just about me running, it was always about the team running together,” she says. She screamed so much for the 34 senators that made it into SG that she didn’t have the voice to scream for herself when she was announced president, she adds. She says the first thing she did was say, “Thank you” to the people around her.
If the past year’s battle in getting reinstated as the Boca campus governor taught her anything [see UP 16, 1/22/04], it was that she wanted to fight for those who believed in her, and she says “it was an injustice to them,” if she were to just give up and turn her back on the students. She also fought because she is “a believer of the process and has faith in the system,” she says.
That victory is why Khan says she will make a good president. “I know what it is like, going through struggle,” she says. ” It’s made me stronger. I can relate more to the students and fight and win.”
