"I am look­ing for lega­cy." These are the words of Amil­car Sanatan, the new pres­i­dent of the Guild of Stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Sanatan made this state­ment in an in­ter­view with gieMAGAZINE when he spoke about the con­tri­bu­tions he in­tends to make for his term in of­fice (2011-2012). "The con­tri­bu­tions I in­tend to make" he re­lat­ed "would car­ry on for fu­ture pres­i­dents who may take up the post." Sanatan fol­lows Hillan More­an, who has held the post of pres­i­dent for the past three years.

Cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a de­gree in Psy­chol­o­gy and a mi­nor in So­ci­ol­o­gy, the Pres­i­dent con­tin­ued "I have the ho­n­our of serv­ing the stu­dent body at the high­est lev­el. I ac­cept that as my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty." Asked why he de­cid­ed to run for Pres­i­dent, the 21-year-old stat­ed "I al­ways had an in­ter­est in the de­ci­sion mak­ing process of cam­pus af­fairs. As such, it was through the en­cour­age­ment of my fel­low stu­dents and fam­i­ly that I de­cid­ed to run for the pres­i­den­tial post." Sanatan was in­volved with UWE TV, a cam­pus club that high­lights stu­dents' lifestyles on Youtube through var­i­ous videos and in­ter­views with stu­dents. He was al­so a part of U.WE Speak, a group of stu­dents who reg­u­lar­ly per­form spo­ken word on and off cam­pus. Since this might have been a con­flict of in­ter­est the pres­i­dent re­signed from each of the two groups. "Spo­ken word was my love" he dis­closed to gieMAGAZINE.

When asked about his oth­er tal­ents, the Pres­i­dent proud­ly stat­ed, "I can feed my guild". He boast­ed of his cur­ried to­fu, mush­rooms, egg­plant and his love for all types of peas. If you haven't re­alised by now, he is a veg­e­tar­i­an and part of his man­date on eq­ui­ty and fair­ness to all, food pro­vid­ed by the guild will now be 40% veg­e­tar­i­anand 60% meat. There have been many ru­mours go­ing around cam­pus, since Sanatan has tak­en of­fice. One of them in­clud­ed the can­cel­la­tion of UWI's most promi­nent so­cial event of the year, Cam­pus Car­ni­val. When asked to com­ment on this sit­u­a­tion the Pres­i­dent stat­ed: "In my of­fice there will be no can­cel­la­tion of Cam­pus Car­ni­val.

If high­er pow­ers above me are be­yond my con­trol, who am I to speak to it?" Sanatan has been play­ing Cam­pus Car­ni­val since his days in form six. He in­tends to ex­pand Cam­pus Car­ni­val more cre­ative­ly and gear­ing it to­wards what he calls "stu­dent tourism". Most im­por­tant­ly a lot of em­pha­sis will be placed on se­cu­ri­ty for Cam­pus Car­ni­val next year. An­oth­er ru­mour that has been mak­ing head­way in the halls of the Uni­ver­si­ty is the ban on the con­sump­tion of al­co­hol on cam­pus. Sanatan, does not drink al­co­hol, but be­lieves that a to­tal ban on its con­sump­tion may not be the best ap­proach. Con­sul­ta­tion would play an im­por­tant role on this is­sue. Still, he does not al­low the drink­ing of al­co­hol in his of­fice.

In ad­di­tion to ru­mours dis­closed above, many have been say­ing that those elect­ed on the guild will be get­ting black­ber­ry phones. This again is not the case. The pres­i­dent's in­ten­tion is to get one black­ber­ry PIN for the pur­pose of dis­sem­i­nat­ing im­me­di­ate in­for­ma­tion to the UWI stu­dent pop­u­la­tion who owns black­ber­ry hand­sets. He be­lieves that this ap­proach would en­hance the com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the stu­dents and their elect­ed guild. Sanatan con­clu­sive­ly added that the on­ly agen­da he has is a stu­dent agen­da and plans to lead with ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty. He be­lieves that if any­one is in­ter­est­ed in tak­ing up any type of lead­er­ship role, one should pos­sess hu­mil­i­ty, ser­vant lead­er­ship and the ca­pac­i­ty to look at one­self as a per­son who com­mands the ma­jor­i­ty.

He ad­mits that the lead­er­ship role of pres­i­dent can be very chal­leng­ing. On a dai­ly ba­sis Sanatan has to read and ad­dress at least 40 emails per­tain­ing to guild mat­ters. On av­er­age he gets about four hours of sleep a night but tries his best to aim for six. Ac­cord­ing to the Pres­i­dent "time man­age­ment is of ut­most im­por­tance es­pe­cial­ly when you are a fi­nal year un­der­grad­u­ate at UWI." Asked whether he sees him­self run­ning for a sec­ond term in of­fice, he seemed in­tent on fo­cus­ing on cur­rent stu­dent is­sues and deal­ing with them as ef­fi­cient­ly as he can.

GEN­ER­AL GOALS OF THE GUILD 2011-2012 (As stat­ed in a Press Re­lease)

-Re­gion­al­ism- In­te­gra­tion of oth­er UWI cam­pus­es in the Caribbean

-Pledge of com­mit­ment to Na­tion­al, Re­gion­al and In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs (So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Is­sues)

-Youth in­volve­ment in cul­ture and ideas

-A suc­cess­ful vic­to­ry at the up­com­ing UWI Games, be­ing held in Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos this year.