SGA Debates Showcase Candidates

 A record 25 or so people showed up at this year’s Student Government Association (SGA) presidential debate with one of them even asking a question.

“What’s one thing that you’d like to accomplish for next year?” sole in-quirer, current school president and senior Mike Miller asked.

“One thing I will get done is expand the curriculum in terms of business-related courses…It’s as simple as adding a 9:20 for one teacher and a 10:20 for another teacher,” junior Bryan Ferguson whose partner is junior Colin Cowles said.

“If I had to pick one thing, it would be renaming the rugby field. The name of the rugby field right now is just Academy Field. It’s not named after an alumnus or a donor or anything like that. And I think we’d be doing a good thing by remem-bering Vic [Krivitski] because he loved that field and we loved having him on it,” junior Matt Ford followed.

“For me, it would be getting initial renovations for the J.C.C [James C. Colgate Hall]. We won’t be able to get an addition built in time, but we can at least make it a useful space so that the million dollars spent on the kitchen [in Donovan’s Pub] won’t be wasted,” Ford’s partner junior Joe Trapp added.

“I think the most concrete part of our platform is the dou-ble major with a minor or dou-ble minor possibility,” junior Amy-Elise McBeth said.

“It shows how we want our stu-dents to be recognized. If you put in the work than you deserve to get the credit,” McBeth’s partner junior Ali Berkman said.

Each ticket has quite a di-verse platform of ideas. Ford and Trapp want to revisit the keg policy. They argue that cans are, in fact, more danger-ous than kegs because students are able to consume more freely with cans. In the opinion of the students, kegs are regulated by a steady flow and this will slow the drinking process down.

Ford and Trapp also plan to stock Case-Geyer Library with rentable academic supplies, set up block parties in the town of Hamilton, establish a coat-check at the Jug and public toilets out back, open Donovan’s Pub up for breakfast, spearhead the building of a community garden green-house, get laundry services in all dorms and ensure that events like the Colgate Activities Board’s trip to a David Guetta concert become commonplace.

On the other hand, Cowles and Ferguson and their “Lucky Colgate 13 Platform” coinciden-tally, or not, has thirteen points on the agenda. They range from offering engineering courses to getting a Campus Redbox pro-gram set up to improving campus food to restructuring housing, class selection and parking poli-cies to instating drunk pick-ups, in which sober individuals would be able to provide rides for any inebriated students downtown.

McBeth and Berkman stressed the importance of healthy and inclusive social spaces on cam-pus. They emphasize their Greek/Unaffiliated ticket, which “aims to address the concerns of exclusivity on campus by devel-oping a variety of social options and creating a social atmosphere where everyone feels included here at Colgate.”

They also want to connect stu-dents with administrators through blogs, fireside chats and “bi-yearly state of the union address[es] and budget release[s].”

Other projects include re-vitalizing tailgates, setting up open houses at Greek-letter or-ganizations, creating more social spaces like Donovan’s Pub, the Colgate Student Union and the Parker Commons.

Current SGA presidents Mike Miller and Andrew Sch-lenger started many of the same projects as those listed above. The candidates for next year would like to expand those proj-ects. Miller and Schlenger, for example, created the first state of the union address. They also worked on opening up Dono-van’s Pub and initiated talks about improving the Colgate Student Union to make it more of a student center.

These candidates have held many positions. They have all been co-chairs, senators, presi-dents, treasurers and commit-tee members of countless things that make other things happen here at Colgate University. They have websites and posters all around. They have blogs and Facebook pages. The only thing pending now is the vote.

The election will begin on April 1 and end on April 3 and students can vote online through the Colgate Portal.

Contact Thomas Hedges at [email protected].