The Guardian enthusiastically endorses Sam Shooshtary, a member of the Unity slate, and the sole candidate for vice president finance.

Shooshtary ran for the same position last year, and while he may have been qualified based on extensive experience at Grossmont College, he lacked his opponent’s UCSD experience. Throughout the past year, however, he has gained a lot of experience sitting on A.S. Council as Vice President Internal Jeff Dodge’s assistant.

Additionally, Shooshtary is active in over a dozen clubs on campus, giving him a firsthand perspective of the trials and tribulations student organizations experience.

Before coming to here, Shooshtary held the office of comptroller, Grossmont’s equivalent of our vice president finance.

Shooshtary says that because of his experience, he is not intimidated by the administration big wigs, and that he will be tough in negotiations with them when getting down to brass tacks on funding.

He has several concrete measures that aim to bring more fairness and equity to the funding of student organizations.

For one, he plans to extend the timetable of the allocation process for student organizations to one week, to allow for a more thorough examination and consideration of the needs of individual organizations with respect to available funds.

Currently, that process is squeezed into two days, which puts the council under a burdensome time restraint, forcing it to allocate funds in an assembly line-like fashion.

To better serve A.S. funded student organizations, Shooshtary would send senators to club meetings, and have them submit regular reports to keep the A.S. Council abreast of the use of A.S. funds and of any difficulties the organizations are experiencing.

In particular, Shooshtary believes Student Affirmative Action Coalition organizations and the cultural clubs on campus are underfunded, and he would like to see more funding go their way.

Shooshtary takes issue with the fact that the Committee for World Democracy is given special treatment when it comes to funding, something he finds illegal according to A.S. Council funding regulations.

He would push to have the organization recognized as a normal student organization, as opposed to continuing to automatically allocate its funding in the A.S. budget before the rest of the student organization allocations are even considered.

When it comes to funding controversial events such as last quarter’s Anti-Zionism week, Shooshtary is in favor of maintaining the current policy of granting A.S. funds without considering content. He said that he believes this is the best way to avoid infringing on free speech and to promote discussion, and ultimately, education.

In contrast with fellow Unity slate member Jeff Dodge, who is running for A.S. president, Shooshtary leans toward funneling unallocated and unused funds to the programming office.

We at the Guardian are confident that Shooshtary is more than capable of carrying out the duties of the office of vice president finance, and fully believe he will perform to the best of his abilities.