Last words

Lingering questions on students' minds were answered by The Student Party, The Students' Voice and Unified parties in a debate-style forum on Friday-only a couple of days before this week's Student Association elections.

The debate commenced with eight general questions, and continued with SA trivia and questions submitted anonymously to each group by the other parties.

The Student Party expressed their goals matched some objectives of UB 2020 including 24-hour busing.

Current SA Senate Chair Hassan Farah, the party's presidential candidate, and Latin American Student Association Treasurer Ernesto Alvarado, running as vice president, explained they want to open up communication lines to students.

Farah explained, if elected, they would hold monthly meeting with each of the student councils to help bridge the gap between the students and SA. The party plans on supporting corporate sponsorships to generate a profit that can be used to benefit SA clubs.

"We promise nothing for ourselves," Farah said, referring to a promise the party has made to cut their cumulative stipends by $9,000. "We want change."

The Students' Voice Party, led by presidential hopeful Shervin Stoney, current Cross Country Club president, advocated the executive board approach students next semester to ensure openness. Vice presidential and treasurer candidates, Matthew Key and Jessica Dorofy, respectively, were no-shows due to prior engagements.

Green initiatives shine on the party's long list of goals that includes making all forms for SA clubs available online, eliminating cover sheets and purchasing smaller hybrid vehicles to replace the current SA van fleet.

If elected, Stoney plans to appoint the new role of Environmental Secretary and establish a student opinion council.

"My party is not making any big promises," Stoney said. "We're giving the students exactly what they deserve."

Current SA Assistant Treasurer Cheryl Mohabir and International Coordinator Andrilisa Read, Unified's presidential and vice presidential candidates, respectively, introduced the Unified Party.

The candidates stressed the experience of their executive board members and boasted their enthusiasm to work with clubs. They cited the need for better communication between clubs and the student administration and encouraging inter-club events.

Another major goal of their party is to increase the role of SA promotions outside of North Campus and the Academic Spine.

"We don't have extravagant goals and we know it's a one-year term," Mohabir said. "We know what works and what doesn't work."

Each party stressed the need to become more involved on South Campus. Unified and The Students' Voice Party each suggested the idea of setting up an office in Harriman Hall.

Both treasurer candidates and current SA Senate members Jordan Fried of The Student Party and Greg Robbins of Unified disagreed about how the student government should be run. Fried said the SA should be run like a business, while Robbins believes that the SA should be managed as a government.

Tensions flared when Jordan Fried, the treasurer candidate of The Student Party, commented on his opponent when the topic arose.

"I want to stress that it is naive and foolish to claim that a government, especially that of the Student Association, cannot be run like a business," Fried said. "These words only come from an inexperienced, wannabe politician who has no experience running either a business or a government."

Fried, who explained that he owns and operates his own summer storage business, invited Robbins to take notes as he attempted to explain his plan for SA. He was met with profanities, cat calls from the audience and received a round of applause several seconds later when he was cut off by Rosario for going over his 1.5 minute allotment.

Robbins disagreed with Fried's point of view, claiming that the purpose of SA is not to generate a profit, but to provide goods and services to its students for free. Robbins also expressed his concern over a potential conflict of interest for Fried if he runs a private business while campaigning for treasurer of SA.

"You could, and you know, maybe you won't do this, but you could generate revenues for your business by outsourcing say, free storage for students to your business or promoting your business to them," Robbins said.

Rosario believes that the debate went well and hopes that similar events will be done for future elections. He said he was surprised at how easily each candidate adjusted to the format and didn't think there was much hesitation.

He also said he wished the event would have felt mote like a debate since none of the candidates were never on the floor at the same time and only in some instances were they able to go back and counter something that was said earlier.

"It's unfortunate that I feel we didn't have that aspect," Rosario said. "It would have been nice to see people really brawling out."