Miles Rost
Age: 25
Major: Political science and Judaic studies
Hometown: Cold Springs, Minnesota
Year: Academic sophmore, University freshman
Emerald: What is the summary of your platform?
Rost: Well, there are three main areas to my platform. The first one is change. There has been problems with the PFC and with the senate as of late, especially dealing with areas of discipline and also areas involving financial responsibility. The main reason I’m running is because there seems like there hasn’t been all that good of financial accountability and that actually falls into the second part which is responsibility. The PFC was not responsible for a budget. I will be. I will go in there. I will look at every budget. I will do a line item. I will make sure that everything looks up to spec and then we’ll go from there. The third part of it is accountability, which, if I do something wrong, I want to be held accountable. If anybody else in the PFC or in the senate does something wrong, I want them to be held responsible.
Emerald: Is that what you meant by discipline?
Rost: Yeah.
Emerald: What do you think qualifies you for this position?
Rost: Well, one; there’s determination. I do the best that I can with every single job. I also have previous experience. I’ve dealt with budgets when I was working for a computer company. I’ve been dealing with a personal budget for almost 10 years. I’ve been doing a lot of different experience work involving budgets, involving the political process. I worked on the floor of the Minnesota State House of Representatives. I’ve been working, as of late, trying to get in and do some work in Salem.
Emerald: What did you do for the Minnesota House of Representatives?
Rost: I was a page. I was down on the floor. I was delivering messages. I was getting different bills and going to the library. Doing some research.
Emerald: Why do you want this job?
Rost: Because I believe that the people in right now have been acting childish and I believe that I can do a lot better then they have shown as of late.
Emerald: In light of the ASUO retreat to Sunriver, Oregon, what is the best way to insure proper accountability from student leaders next year?
Rost: One is to make certain that if anybody, or that the rules are specified beforehand. If you’re going to go on the trip, if you’re going to represent the University of Oregon, you must be on your best behavior. You must be on your most exemplary behavior. You violate this, you’re out. I mean basically, it’s not even a two strikes policy. It’s a one strike. You do something wrong, you violate University of Oregon law, you violate state law, you’re out.
Emerald: In light of the actions taken with the Oregon Commentator, what aspects of a student group would you take into consideration when considering the approval of a mission and goals statement?
Rost: Specifically that they have been following through with the set statement. In the case of the Commentator, they actually did follow through with their statement in that they had created a discourse out in the field, out here in out campus and was able to effectively do its job. It got people talking and in all the classes I was in, a writing class, a political science class, that was one of the topics that we discussed and it was discussed heavily.
Emerald: What areas of the budget do you plan to target to bring PFC spending within its benchmark?
Rost: I’m going to look at everything. It doesn’t matter which group it’s with. It doesn’t matter which area it’s with. I’m going to look at every single budget. See if there is anything that is wasteful. If there is I ask that it’s cut. If it’s not, then I won’t and that should be able to bring things down pretty well. You just have to be able to spend the time to take look at every budget and make sure that they are up to snuff.