Through lows and highs, Stambaugh triumphed over the adversity of the SU offices. Stambaugh did better than last year’s president Barb Wright, which is reasonable to expect in a normal year–but simply comparing Stambaugh to Wright does great violence to his achievements.
Despite an argumentative and inefficient council, Stambaugh often asserted his leadership role in focusing efforts at discussion and action. Unfortunately, his valiant efforts to compensate for his executives’ weaknesses, and his focus on such issues as tuition were often at the exclusion of other student concerns.
Despite his failure to actually prevent a tuition increase (and his inability to keep differential tuition at bay), the tuition battle was successful for Stambaugh. Not once in the last four years has the SU president made their cause known to so much of the public, and student participation in this year’s fight was only outnumbered by recent war rallies.