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Communication and school unity were the theme of the night as candidates for the 2004-2005 AUSA Senate declared and debated their platforms in Driscoll Thursday evening.
Elections started yesterday and end tomorrow. Students can vote online on AUSA’s Web site.
The five president/vice presidential teams first introduced themselves and their policies for two minutes, then answered two questions asked by current Vice President Micaela Morenz before responding to questions from the audience. Morenz asked, “What is the role of Senate on campus, and how do you fit into that role?” Also asked was, “What do you think is the biggest change that needs to happen on campus?”
Students in attendance were especially concerned with problems in the financial aid office and the need for more scholarship money. After all the president/vice presidential teams had their respecitve opportunities to speak, each student running for a contested senator position had two minutes to present his or her platforms and then field questions from the audience. Each uncontested candidate had one minute to outline his or her plans for next year. Senators were concerned with communication and class unity as well, and most were more vocal about scholarships than the president/vice presidential candidates were.
Students running for Senate positions include: Molly Brown and Kyle Bixenmann for AHUM/SOCS senator; Clinton Emmerich, Milena Zilo and Jaime Conry for DCB senator; Brian Kelley, Theo Chapman and Josh Carson for NSME senator; Elizabeth Roberts, Ana Nedergaard and Clark Cryer for off-campus senator; Lauren Goldman, Dan Cooper and Adrienne Alterman for sophomore senator; Jeremy Neil Andrea Horvei for junior senator; Steve Forbes and Patrick Parish for on-campus senator; Shantel Jones and Nick Sauer for senior senator.
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Rich Lufkin, presidential hopeful, and running mate Alejandro Diaz hope to unite Greeks, athletes and common students together to create a more unified school. Lufkin is currently a Junior Senator involved with DUTV, Bridges To the Future and Lambda Chi Alpha, and Alejandro is an international student athlete who plays soccer, next year’s president of the Student Athlete Advancement Committee and student ambassador to Bridges To the Future.
They believe that the Senate’s role is to represent the students, find out what they want and get it for them.
“We pay a lot of money to go here,” said Lufkin. “It’s about time to get what we want.”
Their platform includes working with the City of Denver to increase street parking to two hours, implementing a shuttle service for students to catch a ride to the mountains for skiing and snowboarding.
As representatives of Greek life and athletes, Lufkin and Diaz believe that they can create community between the two groups on campus and extend that community to the rest of the students.
Lufkin and Diaz said that they believe the most important change that needs to happen is to open up a “united channel for everyone to communicate.” They want to get students involved and promote school unity and spirit.
According to their platform, what will prove most beneficial to an open channel of communication would be the implementation of a new student-oriented Web site and the continued success of DUTV.
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Tom Campell and Chase Mordy do not have experience in AUSA Senate, but claim their life experience makes them qualified to become DU’s president and vice president, respectively.
Campbell has lived in the dorms, his fraternity house, an apartment, a house and his parents’ house thus far. This, he claims, helps him relate to every DU student’s individual situation.
They believe that in becoming involved in Senate, their job is to make sure students enjoy themselves and are translators to students’ needs and ideas. In other words, they will serve as the liaison between students’ needs and the administrative boards that will make those needs reality.
“Tell us what’s best [for you], and we’ll provide,” they said.
Their platform focuses on student involvement with an active participation level in activities, clubs, organizations and sporting events. If students are made more aware of the opportunities presented to them, according to Campbell and Mordy, participation will increase as a result. To ensure heightened awareness, they said “tasteful signs” at Driscoll and Sturm would be effective. In addition, Blackboard was suggested as a venue for posting information to alert students to campus happenings.
They said that they want to make better use of what the school and its organizations have to offer.
“I guarantee you’ll have a great time,” said Campbell in reference to the benefits of voting for and Mordy and himself.
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Presidential candidate Max Goldberg, a current off-campus senator, and vice presidential candidate Yusuf Malik, a current sophomore senator, are the only campaigners sporting two members of this year’s AUSA Senate. The candidates’ platform includes the call for an innovative academic committee devoted to scholarship money and student concerns. This is a push for heightened school spirit and support for Pioneer athletics and better student-Senate communication. Goldberg and Malik agree that bringing students and senators together is a very important issue facing the university:
“Students do not have a chance to voice their concern about things that go on at this campus, and we will bridge that gap if elected,” they said.
Both are fraternity members and both have experience at holding leadership positions. Malik is president of club soccer and Golberg participates in Model UN. They both want to use their outgoing personalities. Goldberg is a former Mr. DU winner and Malik was the chair of the tailgating committee in this year’s Senate to get students involved in supporting athletics and other organizations.
“We would like to create an atmosphere that students will be able to enjoy at DU,” they said. “We want students to have fun at DU and not have complaints about how there is nothing to do.”
From free DU apparel to promoting athletics to a committee devoted to student academic concerns and betterment, Goldberg and Malik said their campaign is geared toward the student body.
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Darwyn Metzger and Drew Bonder, running for president and vice president respectively, hope to promote unity within the student body as members of next year’s Executive Board. The candidates’ platform is centered on three important words: community, diversity and student advocacy. Both Metzger and Bonder hope to motivate students to help out in the community both inside and outside DU.
The duo also plans to promote better communication between the students and faculty, citing the importance of student relationships with the Financial Aid office.
“There is a growing negative sentiment toward this office and it wouldn’t take a lot of work to make everyone’s experience with the financial aid office a lot better,” Metzger explained.
Juniors Metzger, captain of the nationally acclaimed men’s club inline hockey team and a founding father of the AK PSI business fraternity, and Bonder, social chair of Hillel and a member of the Conduct Review Board, believe that their different approaches to problem solving would make them best candidates for next year’s president and vice president.
“We balance each other. I am an eccentric, creative thinker and Drew is a more complete, meticulous, conservative person,” Metzger said. “He is the yin to my yang, the salt to my pepper, and the Sweet and Low to my ice tea.”
The two friends and running-mates hope to unite DU students as a community under one common team mentality as next year’s president and vice president of the AUSA Senate.
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Presidential hopeful James Haug and running partner Heather Yocum are running on a platform advocating student organizations and student communication.
Haug served on Senate in the 2002-2003 school year and served on the Marsico Initiative board.
Yocum has never sat on Senate, but has been secretary, treasurer, vice president and president of different organizations on campus.
Haug and Yocum are looking to revamp Driscoll into a student union and encourage students to take advantage of all that is offered in the building “all the time, not just at meal time.” Creating a central place on campus for students to gather, they believe, will increase communication on campus.
In addition, their candidacy is one that promotes student organizations.
As organizers and members of numerous clubs and organizations, themselves, they know the problems that these campus groups face.
They believe that DU has a number of “great student organizations that nobody knows about.” They want to get the organizations places in Sturm and Driscoll to post announcements and get the word out about what they are doing. This, said Haug and Yocum, will also open up the lines of communication on campus.
They also advocate Senate visibility. They said that they would encourage students to come straight to the source if they had a problem with the Senate, its members or its policies.
“If you don’t take it to us, we can’t change it,” they said.
