Friends: The United States has many faces: Wars in far away places such as Vietnam and Iraq, denying visas to reputed scientists, the dominant power in a unuopolar word, and so on. But US is also home to youngsters like Gavin Baker. University students in India might wish to look at what he is doing right now. Please pass this message to doctoral and masters students you know. Best wishes. Arun OA as a campaign issue in a student government election Gavin Baker is running for the Student Senate at the University of Florida. Baker co-founded the Florida chapter of Free Culture and is making open access a campaign issue. His platform is offline at the moment (but the problem is probably temporary, so keep trying). He tells me in an email: I'll advocate for open access to university research and journals, work to expand library digitization projects, promote open source software and open file formats....As far as I know, I am the first student to make open access an electoral issue. He's the first as far as I know too. His candidacy and position could make a difference: At UF, the Student Senate controls an $11 million budget, the third largest in the US. Go, Gavin! Note to students elsewhere: learn about open access and what you and your university can do to promote it. Take your commitment into your research and future career. But in the meantime, take it into your student government!