Candidates discuss safety, involvement and beer in primary debates
Tuesday, Mar. 4, 2008 @ 2:43 am
The four student presidential candidates danced and dived, lost their trains of thought and rambled through some of their positions Friday night.
That being said, the first ever Associated Students of the University of Nevada primary debates, hosted by Dan Lucas of the Voicebox radio show and myself from The Nevada Sagebrush, went pretty well.
The debate was what it was: four people vying for top dog in student government explaining their positions on what we hope are important issues – beer at football games, safety, student money and involvement, among more internal issues.
The candidates played their strengths: Adam Hunt rose from the masses as a from-the-students-for-the-students candidate.
Eli Reilly played up his experience with the programming board, pointing to events as a way for student government to aid students.
Justin Shane, chair of the senate academic committee, wants to give more money to tutoring and academic success programs.
Carmen Gilbert talked about streamlining the budgets of less useful programs to broaden ASUN’s services.
Unfortunately, the number of topics and candidates stopped us from delving into more detail on how the candidates would enforce these policies.
They tackled beer-at-football-games as differently as their backgrounds. Hunt said he would talk with administrators to reach a conclusion, though he disagrees with hiking costs of the $7-plus cups any more.
Reilly said if students wanted to keep beer, he would fight to keep beer. He suggested more police to combat fan drunkenness. Shane agreed, though “it is a complex issue that needs to be discussed with proper authority.”
Gilbert echoed Reilly and Shane.
Safety, “a really important issue,” as Gilbert called it, was also discussed. She said she wants to figure out the status of the much-talked-about emergency blue light system. Shane said six to eight weeks on their installation, though that is not confirmed.
Gilbert took the opportunity to compliment Shane, too, with his idea of a student Neighborhood Watch program around campus. Shane also supported security cameras on campus.
The other two candidates branched from Gilbert and Shane’s reactionary stances.
“We can have all the blue lights, we send all the text messages, but it doesn’t matter if people aren’t educated on how to be aware of their surroundings,” Reilly said.
His answer: buying more “rape whistles” and holding more self-defense classes. Hunt wants to get students thinking about safety early. Students should be exposed to this awareness during freshman orientation, he said.
They talked about other things as well – more than an hour’s worth of other things – but those are the broad strokes.
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on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 2:43 am and is filed under 2008 ASUN Elections, ASUN, News.
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© 2008 The Nevada Sagebrush
