Rachel Pilliod, a sophomore political science and general science major, is running for ASUO president. Ben Buzbee, a junior business major, is running for vice president.
Q: There are, at last count, 10 tickets running for ASUO Executive, which is more than past years. What sets yourselves apart from the other candidates?
A: Our experience — I’m (Buzbee) currently on student senate and I’ve been on the EMU Board for the past two years. Rachel was an (ASUO) intern last year, she was on the (ASUO Constitution) Court and she is currently working on health issues in the ASUO office.
Q: What is your platform?

A: There’s four different parts to it. The first is going to be focusing on leadership. (The EMU Board) defunded the Student Activities Resource Office, so we’d like to build a leadership office. Second would be health care issues. Health care insurance is a very confusing process. We want to create awareness about the opportunities the Oregon Health Plan has for students.
The next thing is legislative issues. What we’d like to do is get (students) to register to vote, to get excited about the election, and then to clearly understand the issues so that they are encouraged to vote.
Also, we will work on getting students up in Salem to lobby toward keeping tuition low, protecting the Oregon Opportunity Grant, the Childcare Block Grant, and just making sure that those standards are still in place.
The last part is continuation of things that are going on in the Exec. right now. Having worked with Nilda and Joy, we want to keep working on those issues that have been implemented already.
Q: What will you advocate for on the state level for students and how will you carry out your plans?
A: The first part of it is going to be a huge push on “get out the vote,” because we will have new local legislators. Health care will be one thing we are going to be lobbying on, also keeping tuition low, as well as protecting the Oregon Opportunity Grant and the Childcare Block Grant, and also working with the Oregon Students of Color Coalition concerning minority access to higher education.
Q: What specific campus-oriented issues will you champion?
A: We are going to work on
developing a campus-wide leadership development program. We’re going to be working on housing standards. Instead of trying to get across the entire housing code as an all-or-nothing sort of deal, we’re going to implement housing standards — passing one piece of legislation at a time — that way we see improvements continually.
Q: How do you define diversity? And how do plan to bring together the diverse voices on campus?
A: To us, (diversity) is just the recognition — and acceptance is the biggest part — of different human attributes and making sure that there’s a presence for each of those. That can be defined by age, gender, ability, physical or mental ability, sexual orientation, race, economic background and education level.
Q: If two student groups were at odds with each other, how would you resolve the conflict?
A: It depends on the nature of the conflict. If there were two student groups at odds with each other over more of a belief issue, I think the only way to work on that would be to create a safe and open forum so that people from within the groups could try to come to a compromise.
Q: If you could change one thing about the University instantly, what would it be?
A: We would like 100 percent voter turnout. Not that necessarily there’s a lot of apathy, but there’s a lot of people who are just unaware of what’s going on.
Q: How would you do things differently than the current ASUO Executive?
A: When new leaders take their position, a lot of times there’s a big tendency to completely reinvent the wheel and that is something that we don’t want to do. We’re not going to come and recreate everything they’ve done. We’re going to add to that and hopefully be more effective as a result.