The three presidential candidates for next year’s Student Union hit the WTBU air waves last night to debate the issues they felt strongly about, including cable television for the dorms, extending the guest policy and working with Spectrum to change the nondiscrimination policy.
“This was a good way for people to know the candidates. … To find out what each of the slates was about was my goal,” said Matteson Perry, the producer of the show and sophomore in the College of Communication.
The show had a listener call-in format. However, Perry asked most of the questions himself.
“I liked the call-in aspect; it was a little less formal,” Perry said.
One particular caller, a BU alum named John, asked what these candidates’ “hot button issues” were.
Michael Moffo, presidential candidate for Real and COM junior, said his slate was most focused on getting cable TV for the dorms, adjusting the guest policy and having a weekly newsletter.
“We do have the passion to fight for these issues, and we will fight for them,” Moffo said.
New Blood presidential candidate and CAS sophomore Jason Nadler agreed with Moffo on what the vital issues are for the Student Union.
“We would like to focus on issues that are tangible,” Nadler said. “The beauty of the Student Union is to be a support group for all the student groups on campus.”
Perpetual Motion presidential candidate and CAS junior Matthew D’Olimpio was late arriving to the show and didn’t get the chance to answer the question.
All three candidates addressed the issue of school spirit on campus and how to raise support for different student groups and athletic teams.
In the end, the candidates spoke freely about what they felt the issues were all about.
Moffo said Real has four main goals for the future. He spoke of “empowerment of real leaders” by having meetings with the community; “speaking with a real voice, directly with the student body as a whole”; using the weekly newsletter and an updated website; “real connections” to increase community involvement; and “real responsibility in governments.”
D’Olimpio said Perpetual Motion wants to “revitalize the Student Union, bring the Union back to the students.”
He mentioned adding the sexual orientation clause, founding a campus-wide Olympics, giving BU a direct line to a Boston-area rape crisis center and promoting a campus-wide survey to find out what students want.
Nadler stressed that the Union is only in power for a single year, and that his slate is focusing on issues that would directly affect students.
“We’re talking about specific things,” he said.
Nadler also mentioned bringing concerts and other school spirit activities to BU through corporate sponsorship.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
