Evan Geier – President
Age: 20
Major: Business
Hometown: Gladstone, Ore.
Year: Junior
David Goward – Vice President
Age: 22
Major: Accounting
Hometown: Salem, Ore.
Year: Senior
Emerald: Can you guys give me a summary of your platform?
Geier: The overarching theme of our platform is integrity. Holding people accountable as we have done within (the Residence Hall Association). We have a very strong financial background. We were both honors business students. Working within RHA we’ve been able to increase relations with other organizations, for instance the ASUO. We actually went out and talked to them to get someone from their organization at our meetings. We now have people who attend diversity circles and things like that. So definitely the overarching theme is integrity, holding people accountable and yeah.

Goward: We have three sub-themes to go along with that as well and I’ll cover. The first one is communications. We believe that communicating what’s going on inside the ASUO to the students is extremely important. The second thing we’ll be doing is posting the budget online for all students to view. Right now I’m having a personal problem trying to find a copy of a budget and it is so hard for any student to know where their money’s going. So not only are we going to post our budget online, we’re also going to post our executive recommendations online as well. So when groups go in front of the PFC (Programs Finance Committee), the groups know ahead of time what our executive recommendation is. But also, those groups can know so everyone is informed when they go into that meeting. And we’re also going to post a detailed breakdown of every dollar a student pays in incidental fees and what exactly it’s going to. So how much money’s going to the APS (Assault Prevention Shuttle), how much money’s going to the Jewish Student Union, how much is going to the Black Student Union so they know for one how much they’re paying in incidental fees and exactly where that money is going to so we can better utilize the services they are already paying for.
Geier: Also, second we’re focusing in on education. There’s currently a $200 million dollar surplus at the state level funding. We need about 50 million of that to get a tuition freeze so we’re going to be working toward that. And we’re also going to be working on on-campus education issues. We currently can do four things about your teachers and your gradings, how they are and we want to expand that. We also want to work on other issues within education so that people have more information about which classes they can take and things like that. As for scholarships and grants — that along with the tuition freeze — making it so there’s more equal access to those because sometimes not everyone has access to scholarships and grants.
Goward: And the last thing we want to do is build relationships within the campus community. Right now there seems to be a hostile atmosphere with what happened with the Oregon Commentator and the other groups. We want to mend that. We also want to reach out and bring people into the ASUO, which means we are going to step out of the ASUO and build relationships not only with student groups and get them involved, but we’re also going to invite different groups to submit budget proposals to us so that we can help them achieve their goals financially. But also we want to improve our relationships with other schools. Evan here has worked with various (student) senators throughout the United States on the Resident Hall Association level. We want to reach out so we can strengthen our relationships with everyone and basically make the U of O and the ASUO a strong organization because we’re including everyone.
Geier: Just to kind of clarify on that, we have strong, very strong ties with the resident halls and promotion and advertising for events and we want to increase that work to get more people at certain events so that, because when we hold these events they can be costly and if we get more people, it would be more of a benefit.
Emerald: OK, and what qualifies you for this position?
Geier: I currently represent 3,200 students nationally. We have a proven track record with budgets because I was the finance chair with RHA. We balanced the budget in RHA. We’ve also expanded the budget this year in RHA as we’ve done additional fundraising, working relations and things like that. We actually almost have more money than we can spend kind of this year. Other qualifications are we represent students nationally, I’ve talked to students within various other states like Michigan, senators and things like that on the student government level, and you can talk to me about program experience and things like that.
Goward: Yeah, I’m involved with three major ASUO-funded and supported groups. The Oregon Marching Band, the Assault Prevention Shuttle, and the Religious Directors Association, which I’ve talked about three — and knowing what is going on on the ground level helps me understand exactly what the programs are going through, what their budgetary needs are and kind of what is really going on and whether, you know, if I was in the ASUO position I would be able to see what is going on in the office, but I have the extent of knowledge to know exactly what is going on in the program. I also have an accounting background where I’ve handled a $100,000 budget and my education really supports the position.
Emerald: In light of the Sunriver retreat, what is the best way to ensure proper accountability from student leaders next year?
Geier: Certainly setting up beforehand the consequences in which members will be attending various retreats and things like that so not only will you be giving them programs the ASUO has talked about for increasing awareness, but setting the consequences ahead of time and you’re making them sign on it. They’re saying ‘it’s something’, they’re saying ‘you can’t drink ahead of time,’ but they’re not setting the consequences. So making the consequences well known, making them strict and severe is also going to, it’s going to prevent people from doing things like that and if they do, holding them accountable and we will follow-up, and if they do that number one, the incidental fees will be repaid without a doubt. I’m not going to break or have my members break Oregon laws and U of O policy and then not repay the money. Also those people are going to be reprimanded, not only within the organization, but if they broke a state law, that’s going to be known as well and that is going to be handled, and that is going to be known to the student body as well.
Goward: From the moment we step in, the policies are going to be enforced. We’ve got a great opportunity. We haven’t been in a position of ‘that happens every year, we do that every year and that’s just the way it is with us.’ Not with us. The way you do it is you follow the rules and you follow the guidelines and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Evan has demonstrated that in his dealing with the RHA. When that kind of stuff happened, we canceled the retreat and they paid back the money and the people were, suffered the consequences that were due.
Emerald: OK, we’ve got about a minute left. How would you organize your staff to reflect your priorities?
Geier: That’s a very good question. I think increasing just the involvement and outreach within the staff. Letting them know the issues, our platform, working with the culture within ASUO to actually foster and increase relationships and things like that.
Goward: And also hiring from outside the ASUO. From the business school, from every area that we can find people who are committed. That will help us create an ASUO that is built on diversity and will better help us know what is going on on the campus as we have a div
erse staff.
Emerald: Could you please tell me why do you want this job?
Geier: I think because there’s a lot on-campus and off-campus that can be done representing students, getting — both monetarily and involvement-wise — personally there is a lot of students who’ve kind of just had apathy towards ASUO and I think by working with the various student groups, working with the various organizations that you can make, you can make a better campus life for people, we can decrease some of our tuition, we can increase — I don’t know. I think it’s kind of just a matter of being able to represent students.
Emerald: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Geier: On top of that, I think it’s the best position, I think it’s the best place to be to be able to work for your community and work for students and get their voices heard. So just what I would add would be, just in looking at student government and kind of those things in general, what we really want to set out to do is set a precedent for new things down the road that can be long-term, permanent things to help student government. For example, putting the budgets online for students to view, increasing involvement by getting awareness out and things within the residence halls and just students in general, kind of changing the, a little bit of apathy that’s been around within the ASUO. I guess that’s about it, kind of setting a precedent for things in the future.
— Sheldon Traver