Oregon Daily Emerald: Pierre, what is your major?
Spence: Political science.
Emerald: And what year are you?
Spence: Right now I’m a (sophomore).
Emerald: Are you involved in any activities or groups here at the University?
Spence: Not really. I’m in Ultimate Frisbee. We’re trying to get a soccer team going.
Emerald: Why are you interested in student government?
Spence: I was involved in government throughout high school. Did senior class president, all that kind of stuff. And the more I’m taking political science classes, I’m really getting interested in politics, maybe even as a career, and I thought this would be a good start.
Emerald: And Jack, year and major?
Mantel: Sophomore, journalism.
Emerald: And are you in any activities or groups on campus?
Mantel: No, I’m going to do the Ultimate Frisbee thing.
Emerald: Why are you interested in student government?
Mantel: I also did it in high school, and I transferred here from Lane (Community College) and I took some political science classes over there and I just kind of got interested in it, and I’m taking economics classes and seeing different ways to spend money. I thought I could help out.
Emerald: So why don’t you tell me what your legislative agenda is?
Spence: As far as what we’re planning on doing? Well, our biggest thing is we want to get students more involved. I was talking to everyone that I know, pretty much, and only one could name who the current president is — and that was Jack because he went to the same high school as her.
Emerald: Rachel?
Spence: Yeah.
Emerald: I see.
Spence: And so, it just really seemed like there wasn’t a whole lot of student knowledge about what’s going on and that kind of stuff, so we want to start getting them more involved. Since we — one thing against me and Jack is we aren’t currently involved with ASUO and stuff — we want to really, hopefully, get a lot more involved in it.
Mantel: It’s always a problem though because we both want to get into it but it’s hard to find information, even like — mean, you can look on the Internet and stuff but you don’t know a whole about what goes on with the president and vice president until you start looking around for it. You don’t really know what they do.
Emerald: Are there any specific ideas you have in mind to get students more involved?
Spence: Well, I was reading about the debates last year in the Emerald archives, and it seemed like they were throwing out ideas like ‘have a group of students that can meet with the Executives once a month,’ that kind of stuff, and those are all good ideas, but I think we’re a lot more approachable than that. You know, if you write us an e-mail, that kind of stuff. And I think that’s really going to be where we focus on everything. Just trying to get more approachable.
Emerald: How would you tell students that you are more approachable? How would you get the word out?
Spence: I think just meeting with them around campus. Not trying anything huge like dressing up in a gorilla costume like they did last year, and doing crazy stunts. But more just talking with them, hanging out at like the — what’s that the common ground? Just going up to people, saying ‘how’s it going, my name’s Pierre.’
Mantel: Making it convenient for them.
Spence: Yeah.
Mantel: Because people — at like the debates, people don’t show up to the debates because it’s out of their way, and if you make it convenient they’ll get involved.
Emerald: What are your campus initiatives?
Spence: Can you explain?
Emerald: Other things that you want to do to change —
Spence: OK. One idea that I’ve been talking to — because I have a lot of friends who work with Saferide and DDS and stuff, and one idea that they had, which I liked, was maybe increasing the lighting around campus, trying to make it more secure, and one idea was maybe try to get more security guards, but I don’t know if that would be a good idea.
Emerald: DPS you mean?
Spence: Yeah
Emerald: More DPS?
Spence: Sort of, just more police involvement and stuff, but —
Mantel: Even more lighting would do it.
Spence: Yeah.
Mantel: Make people feel safer, at least.
Spence: Maybe like help trying to get students more aware of programs like Saferide.
Emerald: Is this sort of something you’re looking into or something that you’ve actually — do you have a goal set for it? Any idea how you would fund it?
Spence: Yeah, we’re looking into it. And also, we’re also looking at the tuition hikes that seems to be going higher and higher, and maybe ways to soften that.
Emerald: You have any specific ideas of how you might do that?
Spence: Well we’re looking into like the whole — I mean, they’re spending tons, millions of dollars rebuilding Autzen and (McArthur) Court —
Mantel: The business building down the street.
Spence: Yeah, and like the business building. And it just seems like maybe it’s not a good time to start building–
Mantel: Books, not buildings.
Spence: Yeah, there you go. Books, not buildings, I like it.
Emerald: So, looking into how you can reroute some money from those projects into financial aid?
Spence: If it’s possible. And also, there’s work study programs. We were looking at the work study jobs that are offered and there’s a lot, actually. And I don’t think there’s a lot of students that know about it. Yeah, because I’ve had friends who complained about not being able to find work study programs.
Emerald: So, I have increasing some lighting for Saferide and DDS. How is that related? Because I know Saferide and DDS drive the vans around. How is that related to the lightning?
Spence: Well it wasn’t really like directly related to them, they were just saying ways we can make the campus more secure. And that’s some of their ideas since like Saferide is driving women in the dark. They aren’t related.
Emerald: So getting more DPS, is that something that you —
Spence: Not really, that’s an idea that was thrown out, but I don’t know if that would really do much. So, no, that’s not —
Emerald: How will you interact with the community?
Mantel: I like community service. You can always — I think the best way to attract people to know who you are is to try to help them out. And so if you make efforts to help people out like — I don’t really know how, just going out and cleaning up streets or something — but if you’re helping somebody out people notice, and you are noticeable, people think you’re a nice guy or whatever, and then you become more approachable that way, too.
Emerald: Do you have any specific ideas about community service, or is that just something to look into to?
Mantel: Something to look into. I mean, there’s always cleaning up stuff, there’s always vandalism all around, there’s all sorts of stuff going out. There’s always festivals going on that you can help out at, have booths at the fair, there’s all sorts of junk that you can do to help people out.
Emerald: How would you try to involve students in the community service?
Mantel: I’m thinking more about community service just so people recognize who you are, but I don’t know how you can involve students any more than paying them to go out of their way. For people to recognize what we do.
Emerald: So maybe just involving the ASUO in community service?
Mantel: Yeah, but it makes you more with the community.
Spence: By example or something, they’ll say ‘hey that’s really neat, I want to help out, too’ and get more people involved. I think that a lot of what we’re trying to say is we want to get this school to be more involved with the community in a lot of sense, we’re both local guys here and we really care about this area.
Emerald: How would you make the ASUO relevant to students?
Mantel: I think the concerns are already relevant, it’s just people don’t know
about them. Obviously, everything that ASUO does affects the students, so it’s just getting the students to know what it’s all about. I mean, that’s why the ASUO is here — it’s for the students.
Spence: Maybe like advertising more when we’re having meetings that they can attend, putting up posters saying ‘hey there’s a senate meeting going on.’ Just trying to increase awareness in general — hopefully somebody will be interested in it.
Spence/Mantel Interview
Daily Emerald
April 1, 2003
Spence and Mantel
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