Student Union slates spar at town hall event

In order for the Boston University Student Union to represent students better, it must emphasize student unity and raise awareness of Union across campus, slates agreed in the first campaign event Tuesday.

Candidates in the two slates &- Renew BU and BUnited &- squared off in a town hall at a College of Arts and Sciences classroom in anticipation of the beginning of voting on Monday.

The candidates answered questions about gender-neutral housing, BU community and Union structure during the discussion. All 10 student attendees were involved with Union, the Student Elections Commission or slates in the race.

Before the meeting, the BUnited slate, consisting of School of Management junior Taylor Riley for president, CAS sophomore James Boggie for vice president, CAS junior Jenna Kreyche for secretary and SMG sophomore Joseph Nangle for treasurer, expressed concern that attendance might be low because the SEC had trouble reserving a spot and only notified them of the location in an email Monday morning.

“We all just wish we could have known in advance where it was going to be so that everybody could put in their own part in marketing,” Riley said.

But SEC candidate commissioner for Union and CAS senior Lauren Prince said the SEC’s focus is getting out the vote, and the event’s purpose was to give candidates a chance to get comfortable before the debate.

“We didn’t want to waste time to try to make this event too too too large to detract from the rest of the campaigning period,” she said.

During the meeting, audience members asked questions and Prince, who will also be moderator at the debate, filled in with questions she gathered from students and administrators.

While BUnited said their focus is on broad issues like unity, transparency and responsiveness, Renew BU’s slate, consisting of CAS junior Arthur Emma for president, CAS junior Daniel Ellis for vice president and SMG junior Benjamin Noble for treasurer, with Emma and Ellis in attendance, cited the BU Shuttle, print quota and bringing back football as their central issues.

Unofficial write-in candidate for president with the Greek slate and College of Communication sophomore Julian Jensen attended part of the meeting, but could not participate with the other candidates because he is unregistered.

Both slates said they support a push toward gender-neutral housing.

The Renew BU slate said although gender-neutral housing isn’t one of their top priorities, they were surprised to discover last year that BU doesn’t already have it.

The BUnited slate said they hope to have one person dedicated to the issue.

BUnited said it also hopes to streamline the procedure at Union GAs to attract more students, possibly by discontinuing the process of approving minutes and generally limiting bureaucracy.

“I see far too much focus on the political structure of the Union,” Nangle said.

But Renew BU said the larger problem is students not knowing anything about Union. The slate also denied charges of being too confrontational with the administration.

“We want to be diplomatic,” Ellis said. “At no point do we want to be combative with the administration but we’re not going to be pushovers.”

But BUnited’s Boggie said a Union executive board can’t be too anti-administration if they want to make progress.

“It’s not the way it works,” he said.

CAS sophomore and South Campus RHA representative Amanda Peterson blamed “general apathy” for the low turnout.

Boggie said he thinks students at BU aren’t apathetic, but busy with other activities.

Ellis said he thought the discussion went well, but had hoped for a bigger audience, saying, “it just wasn’t advertised enough.”

Riley agreed the meeting went well and said she thinks it’s the candidates’ job going forward to attract students.

“We’re running to get people involved and as part of that platform I think we should recognize that we need to interest students in getting involved now,” she said.