With one week left before the elections, the new Temple Student Government tickets continue to battle about different platforms and ideas.
The two competing tickets are TU Dream Team and TUACTION!.
TU DREAM TEAM
Gäelle Amazan, current TSG allocations chair, leads the TU Dream Team alongside Kevin Gerard, candidate for vice president of external affairs, and Alex Barnett, candidate for vice president of services. They are all current TSG senators.
“TU Dream Team is a ticket that realizes that the dream must come first,” Gerard said. “We are working for and with the students to create one unified entity.”
TU Dream Team has four main points in its platform: academics, communication, culture/leadership and student life. In many of these points, the candidates show their strong commitments to student organizations.
The academics section of the platform discusses TU Dream Team’s “Back to the four-year plan.” This initiative sets out to address that 64 percent of Temple students graduate in six years or less.
The creation of a multifaceted TSG Web site will address the issues of communication. TU Dream Team said it wants the Web site to have shout boxes, forums, video streaming, comment boxes and a more advanced calendar of events.
“We have to take advantage of the current technology that we have,” Barnett said. “Even the smallest voice should be heard.”
The ticket thinks TSG should act as the filter of student voices to the administration.
“Let us be the dream and the action,” Barnett said at the vice presidential candidate debate.
Other initiatives in the TSG platform are the “Create a Legacy,” “Be a Leader,” and “How To” campaigns, allocations reform, assistance in student organization advertising, recognition of Greek life on campus and student organization orientations.
“Our ticket is about representation, and we want to hear all of your voices and opinions,” Amazan said.
TUACTION!
Kylie Patterson, current Senate university affairs chair, leads TUACTION! with former TSG Parliamentarian Jon DeSantis running for vice president of services, and Anthony Leyro, current TSG treasurer, as the candidate for vice president of external affairs.
“We are TUACTION!, and we are committed to achieving results,” Patterson said.
TUACTION!’s platform contains four main points, as well: broaden the scope of TSG, connect students with resources and services, make TSG more transparent to the student body and work with the broader community.
For broadening the scope of TSG, TUACTION! said it wants to create more recognition for the arts on campus, get the commuter population and freshmen more involved on campus, meet with all student organizations during the fall and survey 100 students every week to ascertain students’ needs.
DeSantis discussed the many proposed services TUACTION! plans to enact if elected.
“We believe in talking to you about sustainable resources that have real measurable outcomes,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis discussed the plan to have a comprehensive online Owl Guide that lists all resources, services, opportunities and resources available to Temple students.
They will upload a calendar that contains all events funded by the General Activities Fee so students can attend the events that they are paying for.
Other services for students proposed by TUACTION! are shuttle buses to Old City on weekends, legal counsel for students with off-campus landlords and direct deposit allocations.
TUACTION! also referenced the need to improve the TSG Web site to increase more transparency. They plan to launch a TSG blog to fill students in on TSG events, complete with comment and suggestions boxes for students to express concerns.
“There’s nothing worse than having all these dreams and not being able to bring them in action,” Patterson said.
The presidential debate will be today at 6 p.m. in the Johnson & Hardwick cafeteria. The ticket debate will be April 6 at the Bell Tower.
Elections will occur April 7 and 8. All voting will be done online.
Rebecca Hale can be reached at rebecca.hale@temple.edu.
Be the first to comment