Friends since their days together at Eugene’s Roosevelt Middle School, ASUO executive candidates Sean Ritchie and Jason Babkes said the values that have kept them close to their families and high school friends will translate to loyalty to the student body if they are elected.
“We’re very loyal to our family, very loyal to our friends, to all our relationships,” said Ritchie, who is running for ASUO president. “And I feel that would carry on to any leadership position we take on, especially as vice president and president of the student body.”
This year’s ASUO “outsiders,” juniors Ritchie and Babkes have never worked in University student government, but have held other leadership positions. Ritchie was the student body president for South Eugene High School and Babkes was the managing editor of the school newspaper.
Babkes is currently coaching three youth soccer teams, and Ritchie coached a junior varsity high school basketball team last year.
What they lack in ASUO experience, they make up for in leadership, Babkes said.
“Our opponents have a ton of experience in the ASUO, I’m not going to deny that,” he said. “But … being an executive takes leadership. Not necessarily knowing where every period goes and every semi-colon goes, (but) being able to lead a government and being able to work with people, and having the personality for that.”
Senior Ben Matson said he plans to vote Ritchie and Babkes for ASUO Executive because he believes in their motives and their ideas for improving the University.
“They’re running for the right reasons,” he said. “They’re not just running to win.”
Ritchie and Babkes’ campaign platform includes new solutions to recurring campus issues such as ticket allocation, housing codes and safety.
They want athletic event tickets available to students at times that don’t conflict with classes so students don’t have to skip.
They also want to work on both off-campus and on-campus housing codes. One goal they have is to change University housing contracts so that students living in residence halls have more leasing options available.
“We recognize that the administration is in a bind, and at the beginning of spring term no one wants to live there anymore, but we want it to be fair,” Babkes said.
They also plan to improve campus safety by designating safe routes through campus patrolled by Department of Public Safety officers or starting a bicycle escort service where students could call for an escort who would ride to where they are and walk with them to where they needed to go.
“Safety’s a big one for me,” Babkes said. “If people don’t feel safe here, that’s terrible. People should feel safer on campus than anywhere else.”
When they’re not campaigning, school and friends are top priorities to Ritchie and Babkes. Ritchie, a business and sociology major, is in the business school honors program. Babkes, a philosophy and business major, is a member of the University philosophy club.
They relax by spending time with the close-knit group of friends they have known since high school.
“When we do something, we have so much fun,” Babkes said. “Like when we go out to dinner as a group, it’s so fun, you come away hurting, you’re laughing so hard.”
As executives, Ritchie and Babkes said they would use their fun-loving natures to make ASUO a more open and welcoming place where students would feel comfortable coming to them with any concerns they might have.
“A lot of times in leadership positions different groups of people or different individuals are compromised (because) they’re not taken as seriously, or their group isn’t taken as seriously,” Ritchie said. “That’s not us at all.”
Babkes said the University needs a new perspective in student government. “We’re going to bring personality to (the ASUO),” he said.