Ohio University’s Student Senate election season slowly launched online as Twitter campaigns began to pop up in the early morning hours Monday.
Three tickets are competing for OU students’ votes: Action, One and Restart.
Restart is the only ticket without current senate members.
Roughly 10 percent of OU’s student voted in last year’s election, with 2,313 votes being cast. The number was an improvement from 2012, when 2,172 votes were cast, but did not come close to the 4,057 that were cast in 2011, according to a previous Post article. Both undergraduate and graduate students will vote in the senate elections on April 17.
The Post sat down with the executive candidates for each ticket and asked for their thoughts on the current senate and how they foresee the organization under their own administrations.
One ticket:
Twitter: @oneforohio
Fundraised: $2,000
The Post: Why are you running?
Ballinger: We all bring different aspects to the table. Carter is very well-rounded when it comes to monetary things. He’s been in SAC ever since he started. Alex is very well-structured when it comes to managing and delegating tasks and I’m very good at just getting out there and talking to people so we bring all these different aspects to the table that makes us a very good trio.
The Post: How would you help students understand university topics such as OHIO Guarantee and the Housing Master Plan?
George: I think Student Senate serves as kind of a link between the students and the administration and I think that one of the biggest parts of our jobs is taking all of the administrative talk and translating it to ‘why should the students care.’ I think holding more forums, really getting out to the students. We invite them to our meetings to listen, but students don’t always know where to find us so going out to them and really explaining to them what these issues are and why they’re important, I think that’s important to us.
The Post: If elected, what would you like to accomplish as an executive board?
Ballinger: We’re going to do some drastic overhauls, including, but not limited to, the first day back next semester we will pass about 50 resolutions restructuring the entire body. We’re going to reformat the rules, which I attempted to do until I was fired. We’re going to restructure SAC and we’re going to make sure students are properly represented on this campus, especially through our body because, especially this year, one of the biggest problems we’ve had is people are not doing their jobs and that’s going to change.
The Post: What’s one major problem Student Senate currently has that you would like to fix?
Phillips: Leadership definitely… for me it’s the way in which the SAC process is done. We’re in charge of half a million dollars and we’re giving out free money and half these organizations don’t even know that resource is there. The process… needs to be fixed.
The Post: Why are you the best candidate for the positions you are running for?
Phillips: I’ve been on SAC since my freshman year. I’ve literally had every single role within that commission. … I know exactly how it works. It took me a long while to figure out how SAC works because if you look at our rules, we have like 14 pages for our commission, whereas you look at the other commissions there is maybe a paragraph, so it takes a lot of time to understand how that commission works because it’s kind of different.
Ballinger: I’ve been advocating for students since I was a freshmen. I was president of Hall Council and as president we did a fundraiser for the Make A Wish Foundation for this area (and) raised $250. Sophomore year as West Green senator I implemented a plan to get high- definition televisions in our residence halls, which hopefully will be coming around soon and through that I created the residential housing advisory board, which advises Pete (Trentacoste), the executive director, as to what we can do to better (at residential) housing, including but not limited to: Bush (Hall) renovations and the Master Housing Plan. This year I am the chair of Honor Council. We have completely… rewritten the honor code, (which will) hopefully be implemented next year to the new incoming freshmen. House Bill 111, I’ve been advocating since April for student trustee voting. I’m one of the only people on this campus who have been at the Statehouse talking to elected (representatives) saying this is what we need as students at Ohio University. … I’m working with legislatures, I’m advocating for students where it needs to be advocated to, which is the Statehouse.
George: Student Senate is such a large organization and there are so many different working parts to it. I’ve had the opportunity to serve as several different roles on the body and kind of see how they all work together. I think being able to really reach out to the students, we have to have a fully functioning internal body and I definitely think that I can kind of help put the pieces back together. I also see the importance of finding a better way to connect and to reach out to the students. I think that right now, we’re not really doing that. The fact that we didn’t have a functioning website for the majority of this year is a big issue. A lot of our documents, our meeting minutes, to apply for a position — that’s all on our website and that wasn’t there. Working on a better way to reach out to the students, seeing that value I think makes me a strong candidate and I think it’s important for the students.
The Post: What do you think of the other candidates?
George: I’m excited to have an outside-of-senate ticket. I don’t know if this is the right time to say this, but we tried really hard to pull people from outside.
Ballinger: About 25 percent have never been on Senate.
George: We’ve been labeled as, you know, the insiders, and yes, the three of us have been in senate, but to lead an organization I think you kind of have to have some experience.
Ballinger: We have experience and fresh perspective and I think that’s key to leading an organization. When it comes to the other… tickets, specifically the Student Union ticket, it’s very confusing for us three especially. They come to our general body meetings and they are constantly, essentially harassing the body and dumbing us down and then asking us to dissolve as a body and then they run for the very body they asked to be dissolved.
The Post: How did you pick the name for your ticket?
George: We believe that this campus needs unity and that unity is really going to benefit all the students, bringing all the student organizations together. ‘One’ represents that unity that we would like to see.
@MariaDevito13
md781510@ohiou.edu
