Welcome, and Thanks

TL/DR: Thank you to Gwen Kay, Phil Glick, James McLean, Bruce Simon, Jennifer Redinger, and all of you for electing me UFS President for the next two years.

(Also, I meant the special election in June, not April.....)

(Transcript follows the "Read More" link)

So, happy Fourth of July.  I just got back from marching in our town parade. I hope you all are having a wonderful Fourth of July weekend.

I just wanted to send out a few thank yous as we get started on the next couple of years.

First of all of course, I want to thank our past president Gwen Kay for all the work she's done for the Senate over these past four years, and for providing me opportunities as Vice President / Secretary to collaborate on the projects that we've worked on.

I want to thank also the two other candidates for our special election this past April: Phil Glick and James McLean. Phil has timed out so he won't be coming back as a senator in the fall. I thank him for his service and look forward to seeing him when I visit U Buffalo, in the fall hopefully, and talking with him about governance on campus there. Also, James will be coming back and I look forward to to his voice on the Governance Committee.

I especially want to thank Bruce Simon for stepping up to be temporary Vice President / Secretary until we can hold an election for an interim at the Fall Plenary to finish out the rest of my term as Vice President / Secretary. Bruce has also timed out, so he's definitely not running for interim Vice President. I would encourage any of you to to think about stepping up and running in the fall. We really, for governance to work, we need people like us to step up.

I want to thank obviously Jennifer Redinger in the office keeping all the office administration going, helping me with the transition.

And I want to thank all of you for electing me to be President for the next couple of years.

I think it's probably apocryphal that "may we live in interesting times" is actually an old Chinese proverb. I don't think that's the case, but certainly I think we've got interesting times ahead of us over the next couple of years. I'm looking forward to working with you all on making sure that shared governance has a strong voice in the decisions that SUNY and our campuses have to make.

​So anyway, I hope, like I say, I hope you're all having a great 4th of July holiday weekend and we'll be in touch and start the work shortly.