Name: Sinjin Carey
Major: Human physiology
Year: Junior
ODE: What is your platform?
Sinjin Carey: Our platform is about increasing traditions here on campus. We see an opportunity to increase traditions in the way of student involvement, true representation, as well as a campus collaboration for a more united campus.
ODE: Are you running on a slate?
SC: I am running on a slate, and the name of that slate is called Students United.
ODE: What is the platform of the slate?
SC: Our goal as a slate, or I prefer to call it more like a team, is to try to represent all students, the everyday student that goes here to the University of Oregon, regardless of political ideologies. We’re more about real ideas and not so much about rigid ideologies along the lines of the political issues on campus.
ODE: What are your views on the debate within the halls of the ASUO?
SC: I think that the ASUO should be more of a vehicle for students’ expressions and students’ opinions; my vision for the ASUO is an ASUO that doesn’t necessarily regulate these conversations and makes them private. I think we should be more of an ASUO that promotes the diversity of interests, listens to all students when they want to be heard.
ODE: Is there anything else we should know about your campaign?
SC: We’re excited, and hopefully elections will be a lot of fun. And we encourage everybody to get involved and get informed. There’s a lot of really important changes that are happening here at the University, as well in the ASUO, and we want a lot of students to be engaged and informed.
Name: Nick Dreyer
Major: English
Year: Senior
ODE: What is your platform?
Nick Dreyer: Pass.
ODE: Are you running on a slate?
ND: Pass.
ODE: What are your views on the debate within the halls of the ASUO?
ND: Pass.
ODE: Is there anything else we should know about your campaign?
ND: No.
Name: Ben Eckstein
Major: Planning, public policy and management
Year: Junior
Oregon Daily Emerald: What is your platform?
Ben Eckstein: Our platform includes three main areas: making education affordable, protecting student services and creating a safe and sustainable campus. And then there are a variety of different things under each area that we want to work on next year to make sure that we fulfill those goals.
ODE: Are you running on a slate?
BE: We do have a full ticket, yes.
ODE: What is the platform of the slate?
BE: Making education affordable, which includes a variety of different issues to lower the cost for education. Make sure that we have affordable education, textbook affordability is included, advocating against any tuition increases. Protecting student services is a second area that includes making sure we protect LTD bus service for all students on campus, protecting football tickets, funding important services like OSPIRG. And then providing a safe and sustainable campus, which is pretty self-explanatory … expanding bike parking on campus, making sure that we improve campus lighting, increase the number of blue lights on campus, so a variety of items to improve campus living and make our campus safer and more sustainable.
ODE: What are your views on the debate within the halls of the ASUO?
BE: I think we need more civility. I think we need more compromise. I think we need more listening, lots and lots more listening. Everybody has a point to get across and everybody wants to make that point, but I think we need to be very conscious about listening to our peers in student government. And I think this year there have been several conversations where it’s been quite notable that listening has not happened the way that it should.
ODE: Is there anything else we should know about your campaign?
BE: We’re going to run a clean, strong campaign; we have a group of excited individuals who come from all different walks of campus life and who want to make a positive difference for their fellow students, so we’re going to have a campaign that represents all students on this campus. We’re going to be honest about our values. We’re going to be clean. We’re going to be ethical. And I think it will be an exciting campaign, and I hope every student on campus gets a chance to interact with it at some point.
Name: Cimmeron Gillespie
Major: Political science
Year: Junior
ODE: What is your platform?
Cimmeron Gillespie: I am running on a platform which seeks to lower tuition because I feel that tuition is far too high. And I intend to lower tuition by abolishing the central administration and replacing it with a coalition government of students, faculty and staff, and with this government, with the money not spent on administrators, lowering tuition and increasing faculty and staff wages and thereby creating a more egalitarian system for students, faculty and staff. That is the most significant point of my policy.
ODE: Are you running on a slate?
CG: I am running with all the disenfranchised and disempowered students at the University of Oregon. That is my slate.
ODE: What are your views on the debate within the halls of the ASUO?
CG: That can be answered a couple ways. If you mean by the way debate is characterized, I think it would be better to have a more open format. Ideally, I would think that the Senate should be operating instead of in a boardroom, it should be happening in the Fishbowl or some other deliberately public area. Also, I believe the meeting structure is somewhat problematic. They used to run meetings where any attending student could speak, and now it’s only presenters can speak. This change is not conducive to a well-rounded academic discussion, and it excludes many voices. And if you mean aside from the characterization but in terms of what people are talking about, I feel that depends very strongly on changes from year to year. There are pertinent issues that come up, and there are funding debates as well as debates in terms of specific issues. Last year, Pacifica Forum was very prominent; there have been other issues that have come up, so it really changes from year to year. Two years ago, it was Russell Athletics, the contract with the University using non-union contracts.
ODE: Is there anything else we should know about your campaign?
CG: Yeah, I aim with all respect and process to try to open up all investment records in and of the University of Oregon within my power and to ensure that DPS remains an educational and a defensive organization as opposed to a militant one and that their role should be protective of students, even so far as that if EPD comes on campus to drive them off. And I would go farther even to say that there’s a lot of work to be done on this campus and that it’s not enough just to talk about the incidental fee or to talk about groups, because that’s not what’s excluding students and there’s a deep climate of unaddressed racism on this campus that I think the ASUO would do well to open up discussions and begin having serious discussions about both within the A
SUO, in terms of the Senate and the operation of its other governing bodies, but also in terms of its function of interacting with students; and furthermore, as an association, the ASUO’s job is to fight for student rights and frankly, I think it’s been fighting with itself too much, and it’s time that it takes a stand to protect student rights.
Name: Curtis Haley
Major: Political science and economics
Year: Senior
ODE: What is your platform?
Curtis Haley: The platform that I’m running on is to Colbert and Jon Stewart it up, to mock the excesses of the ASUO and to make the point that people like me should not be allowed to do this; and that they should change the rules to make it a little bit more challenging to encourage some more serious debate in the ASUO so that jokesters, such as myself and (running mate) Nick Warren, can’t just throw flames at the whole process.
ODE: Are you running on a slate?
CH: Yes, we are running on the Students Untied!?!?!, not to be confused with that other group who copied our name. But yes, Nick and I compose the slate, and we are very proud of that.
ODE: What are your views on the debate within the halls of the ASUO?
CH: I think that the debate within the halls of the ASUO depends on which one you’re talking about, but often I think the number one mistake that people make is that because people are not paying attention to the debates of the ASUO that they are not important. They are extremely important, and just because we are not necessarily always in the public eye doesn’t mean that they don’t matter. They matter a great deal, the same way that whatever the Lane County Board of Commissioners decides matters a great deal or whatever the city council decides matters a great deal, even if we don’t always know who’s on those bodies either. And so, I think that the number one thing that we can do to increase the stature of the ASUO is understand that we are important and that the things we do matter and that student voice is important and shouldn’t just be given back to the administration or just be a blank check or just a rubber stamp for one branch or another.
ODE: Is there anything else we should know about your campaign?
CH: Please do not vote for us. Please do not vote for Students Untied!?!?! We are not that other group. They are actually running. And most of all, the ASUO is extremely important. It is something that matters a lot, and all of the people running this year, despite their best efforts to claim that the other people are evil or malevolent or smelly or whatever insults they tend to throw out this week, they all care a lot, and the differences between them end up being pretty inconsequential when you consider that everybody that’s running cares. The differences between the two slates are real, but they are not as distinct as either side would have you believe, and both sides are going to end up doing a great job.
Name: Sophie Lawhead
Major: Psychology
Year: Junior
ODE: What is your platform?
Sophie Lawhead: If elected, I will carry on the grand tradition of our forefathers and sell my office to the highest bidder.
ODE: Are you running on a slate?
SL: No.
ODE: What are your views on the debate within the halls of the ASUO?
SL: In a word, supine.
ODE: Is there anything else we should know about your campaign?
SL: I am currently single.
Name: Stephen Murphy
Major: Mathematics
Year: Senior
ODE: What is your platform?
Stephen Murphy: My platform is just that I feel some of our elected officials have done a good job, but there are many members of our campus community that don’t have a very strong voice in how things are done; even just in general, I feel like, intentionally or otherwise, our campus community silences some voices of minority groups on campus. I would like to see that everybody is free from oppressions and free to be themselves and express themselves and have a voice in how things work around campus.
ODE: Are you running on a slate?
SM: I do not have a slate; I’m running alone with my own ideals.
ODE: What are your views on the debate within the halls of the ASUO?
SM: I feel like I’ve had a bit of experience with how the ASUO works, and I feel like they certainly get things done. But, as with a lot of politics, it’s rather inefficient. I feel like there are better ways to do things. I feel like a lot of people don’t consider the important issues within these debates here, and so I think that could be improved a good amount. But they do a good job. I don’t want to blame them for anything.
ODE: Is there anything else we should know about your campaign?
SM: I am a strong supporter of OSPIRG. I feel like they do a lot of really good work — on campus, off campus and everywhere. I am definitely a strong proponent of them; and just that I, for any students that were around last year, the Campus Change Coalition, I know, I was really inspired by their platform. They wanted to make campus more inclusive. There are a lot of students around here that have special concerns that nobody even thinks about, and I just generally want to make everybody have a more positive educational experience and feel more accepted on campus.
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ASUO primary elections enter full swing
Daily Emerald
March 29, 2011
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