The year after three candidates ran uncontested in the Student Union election, four current Union members will be campaigning against two other slates and three independent candidates from outside the Union over two weeks for next year’s top positions.
Vice President Mark DiCristofaro is running for president on the Team Union slate, which includes his current assistant running for treasurer and two Residence Hall Association representatives for vice president and secretary.
In his campaign pledge on the BU Votes website, DiCristofaro, who is in charge of leading Union meetings as vice president, claims responsibility for “revamping the Student Union into an effective and powerful student government” and says it is time to “further build our team.”
School of Management junior Sunil Murti, however, said he is running for president because he wants to turn the Union “back into an effective student advocacy organization that will demand changes,” according to his campaign statement. Murti is running on the “Sunil Murti for Change” slate along with College of Engineering junior Thomas Lemmo for vice president, College of Arts and Sciences sophomore MaryAnne Dutcher for secretary and CAS junior Johnny Pujol for treasurer.
Murti says students “want women to feel safe reporting sexual assault and not to worry about being disciplined for substance abuse” in his statement.
CAS sophomore Paul Busco, a former Daily Free Press columnist, is running for president on the “Last Action Heroes” slate, which includes College of Communication sophomore Kyle Gabriel for vice president. In their campaign statement, they call for a stronger focus on action, instead of focusing on legislative issues within the Union, which this year’s Executive Board has been criticized for doing.
Adil Yunis, president of the CAS Forum Class of 2008, is running an independent campaign for Union president. Adil says he will work to increase the connectedness between students and Union representatives in his campaign pledge.
CAS sophomore Katie Geiss, who calls herself an “average BU student” in her campaign pledge, is running independently for vice president. SMG sophomore Hersh Parekh is running independently for treasurer, a position that many students are pushing to have a voting seat on the Allocations Board next semester.
The Team Union slate includes West Campus RHA representative John Grant for vice president, DiCristofaro’s assistant Josh Levine for treasurer and 10 Buick St. RHA representative Elena Quattrone for secretary.
Campaigning was originally supposed to begin today but was postponed to midnight because the Judicial Affairs Office had not completed reviewing candidates’ judicial standing.
With such a larger number of candidates than last year, Elections Commission Chairman Drew Phillips said he does not want election rhetoric to focus on whether candidates have had past experience in the Union.
“People from within and outside may have the same opinion on the issue. It’s just how they’re going to be able to attack the issue,” he said. “It doesn’t frustrate me, but sometimes I wonder why non-Union and Union made such an issue. . . . You just have to have a passion and idea for it.”
Though nine of the candidates are running joint campaigns on slates, each candidate must be elected individually. Slates are only used as a “campaign tool,” Phillips said.
“I think that slates provide an advantage in terms of pure distribution on campus,” he said. “By nature, it gives that campaign more visibility because they have more space and more flyers and other materials. But, at the same time, there are so few individuals running, they can say, ‘I’m the one not on the slate.'”
The election will begin April 17.
Candidates are not allowed to talk to the press until they begin campaigning tomorrow, according to Elections Commission regulations.