ASUO Executive hopefuls will square off in a battle of political wits tonight, with candidates debating who among them is most fit to administrate the University’s student body government in 2004-05. After two-minute opening statements, the ASUO Elections Board-hosted debate proper will start with questions from two pre-selected ASUO groups, and then move to general audience questions.
However, those groups — which aren’t necessarily student groups, ASUO Elections Coordinator Stephanie Day noted — won’t be named until the event itself, to stave off solicitation from candidates.
But any hypothetically approached group representative could always simply say, “No.” With that simple caveat in mind, there’s little reason to hide the group’s identities from prior student body review. Such openness is all the more important because the groups chosen “best represented the University campus,” Day said — a tall order for a diverse population of some 20,000 students.
Still, aside from this and elections scheduling problems, the Elections Board’s efforts this year deserve some applause: With Monday’s and today’s candidate fair, and offering crowd-pleasing pizza before tonight’s debate, this year’s Board is doing more than some of its predecessors to culture more student interest in elections that have long suffered from low turnout.