NOTE: This article is simply informational and does not endorse or advocate for either campaign. It was written before the Narang-Kay campaign suspension was announced.
DU’s Undergraduate Student Government (USG) presidential candidates met on April 26 at 7 p.m. for a live debate before voting officially opened on Wednesday, April 27 at 8 a.m. Students gathered in Lindsay Auditorium for one of the largest debate turnouts in recent years as the Aish Narang and Danny Kay campaign faced off against the Tess Greenwald and Chandler Carlson campaign.
Each campaign was asked five questions by the mediators, followed by two questions from the audience addressing a variety of topics.
The Narang-Kay campaign focused on their initiatives regarding eradicating sexaul assault and promoting unity across campus. The team discussed how they’ve already been in communication with Uber, a form of transportation which is requested via a phone application, to reduce the price of weekend rides for DU students by half. The goal of this initiative would be to provide students with safe forms of transportation to eliminate potential sexual assault encounters. Narang and Kay were also adamant on providing sexual assault awareness the minute students step on campus.
During orientation week and throughout the Freshman Seminar (FSEM) course, Narang and Kay are pushing to implement an FSEM lab aimed at educating students on preventing sexual assault, safety precautions and available resources for assistance. The idea is to assert the notion that sexual assault is taken seriously at DU.
“You shouldn’t have to be sexually assaulted to know about these programs already on campus. Everyone should know about them,” Kay said.
Enforcing a mandatory lab correlated with the FSEM courses, according to Narang and Kay, would create constant communication and highlight the importance of this issue on campus.
The Narang and Kay campaign aims to incorporate and educate inclusive excellence through unifying DU as a whole. The campaign’s unification proposition aims to eliminate any separations present on campus.
“We are going to promote unity. USG shouldn’t be separate from DU Programing Board (DUPB), separate from Greek Life, separate from Housing. We should be unified as one DU,” Narang said.
The Greenwald-Carlson campaign focused on establishing DU’s reputation on a national level and providing a voice for students. Greenwald and Carlson expressed their passion and excitement to cultivate a community that students remain proud of years after graduation.
“We support students sharing their voices and their ideas. Our voices need to be heard by faculty and administration,” Carlson said.
Greenwald and Carlson would like to create a positive reputation within the Greek Life community, hoping to eliminate sexual assault and establish unity across organizations.
With a lack of knowledge on what inclusive excellence is prevalent within campus, Greenwald and Carlson strive to educate students.
“It’s not only a duty to our institution, it’s a duty to ourselves to identify what inclusive excellence is,” Greenwald said.
Additionally, both campaigns recognized their support for the Divest DU movement.
Below is a final message to voters from both campaigns:
“First of all, we would just like to thank Tess [Greenwald] and Chandler [Carlson] for an awesome debate. We know they’re fantastic people and would represent the school well. We have very similar platforms, but we differentiate in how we plan to implement these initiatives. Despite recent events, we know that we care about DU so much and we know that you do too. This is our home, this is your home and we want to make it the exact place you want it to be. We want your degrees to carry as much value for many, many years to come. Thanks for coming to the debate. Thanks for supporting us, we really look forward to your continued support in the future. We want a safe DU, a transparent DU and overall a very spirited DU. Let’s go Pios!” said the Narang-Kay campaign.
“We really appreciate the support we’ve been shown throughout the last three years and throughout this last week especially. Just understand that what we stand for and our platform is driven from our passion to foster a more creative, active and inclusive university. We’re looking forward to having more of these conversations in the future. We’re looking forward to continuing this dialogue, keeping it open and discussing how we can facilitate a bigger and better DU,” said the Greenwald-Carlson campaign.
Voting officially opened on April 27 at 8 a.m. and will close Friday April 29 at noon.
