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Five teams running for president and vice president of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC) participated in the first debate of the campaigning season last night, sponsored by the UGBC Elections Committee. Immediately following, the teams took part in a second debate sponsored by the AHANA Leadership Council (ALC) and the GLBTQ Leadership Council (GLC), creating a one-night event that forced the candidates to cover a wide range of topics.
The five teams present at the debate were Chris Denice, CSOM '09, and Alejandro Montenegro, A&S '09; Rhick Bose, A&S '09, and Anand Savani, A&S '09; Phil Dumontet, CSOM '09, and Mike Sokolowski, CSOM '09; Michael Foley, CSOM '09, and Michael Fox, CSOM '09; and Katherine Buck, A&S '09, and Frank Nasso, CSOM '09. Candidates Paul Lilek, A&S '09, and Matt Marshall, CSOM '09, did not attend the event.
In their opening statements, the candidates acknowledged differences in their areas of involvement during their years at BC, but all stressed a common strength of experience.
Members of teams Denice and Montenegro, Bose and Savani, and Dumontet and Sokolowski all have a history of past and current involvement in the UGBC, while Fox and Foley said they gained their experience through the Jenks Leadership Program. Buck gained her experience from her service on the Student Organization Funding Committee and the Student Admissions program.
The first contended issue of the UGBC debate concerned off-campus student and neighbor relations, a topic that has become a pressing matter in recent months with the University's unveiling of its Master Plan.
Bose criticized the administration for not allowing students' voices on this issue to be heard more prominently in the past, and hopes to increase student involvement in off-campus protocol.
"We're being treated as commodities as students right now by the administration," Bose said. "We need to show them that we're here."
Buck took the opportunity to discuss the problem of off-campus safety, stating that she and her running mate, Nasso, support the implementation of Emergency Call Boxes, better recognized as the blue safety lights around campus, at every stop along the Commonwealth Avenue bus route.
Dumontet and Sokolowski endorsed the recommendations made last week by the UGBC Senate, which recently released a report outlining the current facts surrounding off-campus student life, from police presence to discipline protocol to student behavior history. The team also announced a new initiative that they would implement if elected, titled "Students as Good Neighbors." The initiative, which the team has been working on with University Spokesman Jack Dunn, would work to highlight student volunteer work and positive involvement within the greater Boston and Newton communities to improve student image among BC's neighbors.
Foley and Fox stressed a need for direct involvement and interaction with the neighborhood by sitting in on neighborhood meetings to better understand how to remedy off-campus relationship problems that have swelled in the Allston-Brighton community. They also argued for a need for a more clearly outlined and defined punishment protocol for off-campus students, which they said has been the root of many off-campus issues.
Denice emphasized the need for better student-administration communication. He proposed adding the UGBC "Know Your Rights" document to every welcome packet sophomore year to increase students' awareness of their rights.
Michael Reer, news editor of The Observer and A&S '10, asked the candidates if they would support the placement of the UGBC budget online. All teams agreed that as the governing voice of the student body, the UGBC should be transparent; students should be informed as to where their money is being spent.
"You the students should hold us accountable," Dumontet said. He also proposed a weekly online blog for not only the president and vice president but also for each department in the UGBC. These proposed blogs would include a weekly outline of the department's spending.
Communication was the major thread between all topics addressed, and was the first topic addressed by current UGBC President Jenniffer Castillo, A&S '08, when she asked the candidates whether they intended to improve student-administrator relations.
All the candidates proposed different means of attaining stronger lines of communication between students and the administration.
Along with weekly online blogs, Dumontet and Sokolowski proposed a newsletter written by the UGBC president and vice president to update the community, as well as a more interactive and sophisticated UGBC Web site.
Co-sponsorship and collaboration on events with other organizations on campus was also a major aspect of Dumontet and Sokolowski's platform.
Dumontet and Sokolowski and Denice and Montenegro both said they support the continuation of the current UGBC initiative to increase student awareness of events on campus through the use of LCD flat-panel televisions.
Denice and Montenegro said that their experience in the UGBC gives them a better understanding of where the issues stand currently with administrators.
"We know what the arguments are, and we know where they are and where to pick them up where they left off," Montenegro said.
Bose and Savani also sought to increase student-administrator communication with their "I SAW," or Student Awareness Watch, initiative, which would allow students to speak more easily with the UGBC officers on issues that they face on a frequent basis.
Foley and Fox stood in favor of smaller, less drastic changes that will cause less friction between the students and administrators but still allow for goals to be met. The team suggested the implementation of cameras in the Plex so students can monitor levels of activity from their residence halls instead of having to wait in long lines. They also called for more printing stations around campus for better student accessibility.
Buck discussed the importance of student-to-student communication, especially between the ALC and the GLC, both branches of the UGBC. Nasso also proposed to split the activity fee by semester. This, he said, would help clubs and organizations on campus better regulate their funding.
While the candidates did have the opportunity at the end to ask questions of one another concerning their previous responses and other issues, the debate remained tame.
Buck brought up the controversy surrounding Bose and Savani's campaign slogan, "What can brown do for you?," asking that if the team was running on such a stance, how did they intend to help the AHANA community? Earning a rise from the audience for their answer, Bose cited his involvement in the South Asian Student Association (SASA).
The team turned the question back on Buck. Nossa answered the question for the team, who admitted that they need to learn with other students about AHANA issues to better "bridge the gap."
Despite the Elections Committee's efforts to increase audience turnout for the ALC/GLC debate by holding it on the same night as their own debate, the audience dwindled from almost a full Devlin 008 to roughly 50 students.
Nevertheless, the candidates faced difficult questions on behalf of both the the ALC and GLC concerning their efforts as potential presidents and vice presidents to improve communication between the governing branches. All the teams agreed that it is important for the ALC and GLC to remain semi-autonomous in their involvement in the UGBC so they can keep their own presence within the governing body.
"We need to keep the spirits of these groups true," Foley said.
Dumontet and Sokolowski outlined more specifically the importance of the ALC and GLC's current semi-autonomous state, acknowledging the need for these groups to be elected by the people they represent.
Denice and Montenegro cautioned against an overly powerful UGBC and the importance of these two groups having their own voice in the governing system.
"It can't be UGBC on top and ALC and GLC beneath them," Montenegro said. "We all need to be united." The need to improve the hate crime protocol, one of the most heated issues from last year's elections, returned again this year. The topic became a major factor in recent months after the incident of hateful speech caused an outcry across campus last spring.
Foley and Fox called for a more clear definition of hate crimes on campus and on student disciplinary punishment, though they outlined no specific plans to accomplish this.
Foley and Fox admitted their lack of knowledge in the realm of AHANA and GLBTQ issues, being the only team present to have not attended any ALC- or GLC-sponsored events on campus within the last year.
Montenegro and Denice called for more pressure to be placed on the administration for more frequent updates on the hate crime protocol and a more defined outline of what BC Police Department and Residential Life's responsibilities are in the event of a hate crime.
Bose and Savani said the current hate crime protocol needs to be made more visible for all students, and suggested placing a link to the document through Agora. Buck and Nasso agreed that the main issue surrounding hate crime protocol is increasing awareness by making it more visible to students.
The value of the school's current cultural diversity core requirement was also discussed briefly at the debate.
Denice and Montenegro were critical of the current requirement, saying that students see it more as something to "get out of the way," rather than as a learning experience.
The team suggested a mandatory full-year program for freshmen on diversity in an effort to make it a more integral part of BC's academic goals.
Bose and Savani said lengthening the core was not the answer, but rather, seeing that cultural diversity permeates all courses throughout a student's four years at BC.
A major component of Buck and Nasso's platform called for turning African studies, Women's studies, Latin American studies, Asian studies, and Jewish studies into majors; currently, they are offered only as minors. They did support, along with all the other candidates, reaching out to Dr. Anderson Franklin, the Nelson Chair at BC to encourage the administration to hire a more culturally diverse faculty.
"We really need to push and stress this issue," Buck said. "We need to provide AHANA students with positive role models, so that's why we've approached administration to find out how to do this."
While it was apparent that all the candidates lacked a level of knowledge and concrete ideas in the ALC/GLC debate, all said that learning more about these issues was a major goal of theirs during the campaign season.
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