The final Temple Student Government debate was held Monday afternoon during the General Assembly meeting of the TSG.
The debate was primarily attended by TSG members, and focused mostly on the issues that were most important to the organization.
The slates were asked about their opinions on diversity, and how they plan to continue Temple’s tradition welcoming students from all different backgrounds.
Oscar Chow, the candidate for student body president on “A Stronger Temple,” said that diversity was one of the main reasons that he decided to attend Temple.
“[Diversity] was so important to us, that we went out last year, and we rallied for diversity. … And now, because of that, we have our multicultural center. Diversity is very important to us, and we will fight to make sure that it is right,” Chow said.
Andrew Pittz, who is running against Chow, noted that diversity was also the reason that he chose to come to Temple from his home in Texas.
“We need to worry about bringing diversity into Temple, and then we need to worry about what we have while we’re here. We need to celebrate our commonalities, and not our differences,” Pittz said.
Many questions were also asked about the candidate’s future plans for changes in TSG, particularly the General Assembly meetings.
Chow said that he plans to look at other colleges and universities to see how their student governments work, and use that knowledge to improve Temple’s government.
Victor Feinman, the “Spread the Love” candidate for vice president of student affairs said that one of the major issues that need to be addressed is the allocations process.
“Allocations must not be biased. The way it is now, certain organizations receive more funding than others, and then it’s not right. And what we need to do, is we need to get an independent party of students, and make them university representatives, and have those people go over the allocations packet, so that they can decide how much money that the organizations deserves,” Feinman said.
When Pittz was asked about some of TSG’s problems, he said that many students that he has talked are unaware of the student government does.
“When we don’t communicate what TSG is all about, that’s why we lose housing, that’s why we have a problem with parking. Because people don’t know where to go to take their problems to,” Pittz said.
Chow said that since his slate has experience in Temple Student Government, they better understand the problems.
“We know about the history about our problems. We know about solutions. We’re building a blueprint for success,” Chow said.
In his rebuttal, Pittz said that his slate will be more focused on action.
“We don’t need more blueprints, we need implementation …We can sit here with committee reports, and write all we want, and shuffle all our papers, but as long as we don’t do something, nothing will ever change,” Pittz said.
“[Pittz] doesn’t understand that these things take time, not everything is going to be changed overnight,” Chow said.
Cristina Ackas, the “A Stronger Temple” candidate for vice president of student affairs said the “Stronger Temple” slate wants to incorporate other campuses, such as Ambler, Tyler and Center City into TSG as well.
“Our slate right now looks at Ambler as one of the prototypes of a family atmosphere. That’s how we want the 30,000 students enrolled in Temple to feel,” Ackas said.
The elections will be held on today, April 12, and tomorrow, April 13.
Emily Catalano can be reached at catalano@temple.edu.
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