Four tickets are running to take the reins of Temple Student Government for next year in the first multi-party contest since 2010.
In that year, Natalie Ramos-Castillo’s BreakThru TU ticket trounced two other parties to win with 1,345 votes, about 10 percent of the eligible voting students.
This year’s four campaigns—Owl Opportunity, Empower TU, Take TU and Believe in TU—feature some members of the current TSG administration, student organization leaders, ROTC students and student protesters.
They’ll spend the next two weeks campaigning for student votes before the two-day voting period on March 29 and 30. The fervor of student election season will of course not be lost on student media: today at 6 p.m., The Temple News and Temple Update will moderate a debate among the four platforms. And in this issue’s news section, there is a graphic which briefly highlights each platform.
We encourage the eligible voters—any graduate or undergraduate student matriculated on Main Campus—to take these next weeks to determine which platform is right for them and make an informed vote. While turnout has been up in recent years, Temple’s most recent turnout of 17 percent still leaves 83 percent of votes unaccounted for at a university with thousands of students.
Last year, The Temple News moderated a debate between RepresenTU and Ryan Rinaldi’s Future TU. While the contest had a clear winner, we remarked afterward that each side somewhat lacked in providing specifics of their plans. The platforms are notably different in scope this year, featuring in some cases very specific goals like a sexual assault and dating violence center, open-source textbooks and gender-inclusive housing.
It is up to students to weigh the value of the ideas debated in these campaigns and ensure that who we elect is most representative of our needs.
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