Hussain and Meister not borrowing ideas

In response to the "unoriginality" claim of the UB Advocates (Letters to The Editor, March 27), I wanted to clarify a few things.

The old initiatives that were referred to such as those concerning extending Capen hours are the work of Viqar Hussain and Leslie Meister. The resolution was drafted by Leslie, who at the time was assistant Student Affairs director, and Viqar Hussain, who was a voting member of the Senate. As secretary of the undergraduate Assembly last year, my fellow assembly members and I, including Greg Stern, both saw Leslie Meister present the library resolution on November 16, 2004.

(The writer) stated she was confused as to why the resolution was coming up again this year and also why Viqar and Leslie were "taking credit from other, innocent students." The thing is, the administrative officials for this project are still Hussain and Meister, who are now Senate chair and director of Student Affairs, respectively. You can look at the top of the resolution for yourself. Therefore, I think it is safe to assume that your claim would be invalid, in that they stole their own material from last year and are using it again.

Another thing I wanted to point out was that whenever a resolution is passed it is only good for the duration of the current administration of that time, which is why the library resolution must be brought up again.

What puzzles me most is that during council endorsements, the Progress party's presidential candidate, Mr. Stern, claimed to have been an active member of the Assembly. What he failed to mention is that he himself was impeached from the Assembly on April 18, 2005 after failing to attend 50 percent of the meetings. With people like Greg Stern on the Assembly how can we expect great things, when members don't show up? What concerns me now is whether his past performance in this leadership position is indicative of future results.