Voting in the 2006 Student Association (SA) elections begins this Tuesday in the Student Union. Last week, Generation sat down with candidates from several parties to discuss their platforms, question their campaign promises, and evaluate their qualifications for the job.
This year’s race saw the berth of two full tickets (including SA president, vice president, and treasurer candidates as well as four SUNY SA delegate candidates), pitting the UB Advocates party against the Progress party. This is the first election in several years that contains two full tickets of experienced candidates. Additionally, there were two parties running partial tickets in the race—Have Your SAy with presidential and vice presidential candidates, and UB Evolved, which ran a full SA e-board ticket and one SUNY SA delegate.
Generation Endorses
Progress’ Executive Board
After careful deliberation, Generation has decided to endorse Progress’ Greg Stern and Marquis Whitmore for next year’s SA president and vice president, respectively, and Peter Grollitsch for SA treasurer. We feel that they will bring the right amount of experience to the job, while also having an advantageous distance from past SA administrations, ensuring fresh ideas and new perspectives within what is now a stagnated, insider-filled organization. We also felt that of all candidates interviewed, they held the most realistic view of SA’s influence at the university and in the greater Buffalo community.
Progress’ platform calls for a number of new initiatives that create a new sense of community and school spirit at UB, while building strong ties to the city of Buffalo and the surrounding area. They want to accomplish this by advocating for the expansion of Campus Cash into many of the area’s business establishments, working closely with UB athletics to promote and endorse sports, and involving the greater Buffalo community in on-campus activities.
Progress has also called for greater transparency and student involvement in SA’s day-to-day operations. Like the other parties, they plan to extend e-board office hours, utilize online polls to gauge student opinion, and place more prominent opinion boxes throughout the Student Union. But where the Progress candidates stand out is their plan to sit in on Residence Hall Council meetings and to plan regular days on which they will sit at tables in the Student Union to talk with students about their concerns and suggestions. Generation felt that their plan was not only the best, but that the candidates themselves were the most approachable out of those running and seemed to genuinely care the most about student opinion.
In terms of experience, Generation feels that the Progress candidates are well-versed in SA operations, especially treasurer candidate Peter Grollitsch. He exhibited a nuanced knowledge of SA’s budgetary and monetary policy from his work as the current SA bookkeeper, and outlined a plan of fiscal responsibility that calls for cuts in the SA office budget to supplement Progress’ new plans. In contrast, UB Advocates treasurer candidate Andrew DeShong exhibited little to no knowledge of the inner workings of SA’s budget and presented a financial plan that would necessitate cuts in the club budgets to supplement events such as the poorly received and attended—not to mention money-losing—SA DJ Series.
Generation had additional concerns with the UB Advocates ticket, which also includes presidential candidate Viqar Hussain and vice presidential candidate Leslie Meister. Their platform rested mainly upon plans already set in motion by the current administration, and what new initiatives they did propose seemed to have little to no applicability to student opinion or connection to the reality of the office. In particular, Generation was shocked by Hussain’s characterization of the treasurer as a “minimal job,” their poorly thought out and vaguely offensive plan to subject foreign TAs to language tests and their hopes to bring articles into the SA newsletter, Visions, from student affairs, RHA, and even existing publications like Generation—even though, in Hussain’s words, it would be “kind of undermining” those organizations.
Generation liked the platform of Have Your SAy’s presidential candidate Ryan “Moss” Yaeger and vice presidential candidate Charles Wiff, especially their call to reduce Vision’s production to an online-only format that would save the students roughly $35,000 in annual production costs. While we feel that they are smart kids who would be able to adapt to the job—admittedly, we work with them on this magazine—we still felt that we could not endorse them because they had no experience within SA or real knowledge of how our student government works in its day-to-day operations.
Generation Endorses Three SUNY
SA Candidates from Progress, One from Advocates
Generation has decided to endorse Rob Mercurio, Ericka Luddy, and Adam Ruszkowski of the Progress party and Christopher Mendoza of the UB Advocates party for the four SUNY SA Delegate positions. During the course of their interviews, the Progress party candidates stood out for their desire to advocate for SUNY dollars being spent in the greater Buffalo community, most notably a plan to propose a UB-sponsored buy-out and clean up of the University Heights neighborhood. Mendoza, in contrast to the rest of his party, also expressed a desire to reach out to colleges and community members in Buffalo, while both parties agreed that they wanted to expand the SUNY SA delegate’s role in on-campus work. All four candidates also pleased Generation with their enthusiasm an passion for the student advocacy job, as did Melody Mercedes of the UB Advocates, whom Generation ultimately decided not to endorse because she seemed less knowledgeable about Albany politics and the full scope of the position.
Generation was troubled by the two other UB Advocates candidates, Eliot Sherman and Bill Miller, because we not only felt that they were running solely for the benefits of the job—tuition is waived for delegates during their tenure—but also didn’t seem to know or care about what a delegate does.
