Interview With Salerni-Donovan

The Heights: Why are you running?

Mike Salerni: We're running basically because we're avid readers of The Heights and other media on campus and we see the editorials and the articles and the issues being brought up on campus and we feel that the UGBC should play a bigger and more fundamental role in addressing those issues.

Ben Donovan: Essentially underlying our campaign is that we want the UGBC to be more connected to the people and our goal as potential vice president and president would be to bring the UGBC a lot more to the student body and to make it an entity they feel they can rely on and go to.

The Heights: What would you hope to accomplish?

MS: Like Ben said, make the UGBC more representative of the student population as a whole, and also more real, more of a real governing body that deals with the big issues, and is focused on the main concerns, and addresses those issues with reason.

The Heights: How would you go about implementing your ideas/what are your plans for the job?

BD: Well definitely one thing is the issue forums. In order to really make sure that we know [their opinions], they'll be open, a student wil pick a topic to discuss that night, for instance, like a recent issue that I read about in The Heights,smoking, for example. And we'd just have forum where students could come and be free to ask us questions, we would ask them to see what the student body feels, where they stand on particular issues, and in that sense, instead of just pretending we know what the student body was thinking or what we think they might want we'll actually know what they want and how they feel about things

MS: And these issue forums will be, to reiterate, about real issues. Not non-issues, they'll focus on the big things on campus. We're not talking about what TV station you want added to the BC cable program, we're talking about the fact that BC might be compelled to distribute contraceptives. The second big thing would be our directorship. Power of the executive lies within the power to make appointments, and our plan is simple – just four new directorships, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior class. They would basically act as conduits and bring the student opinion right to us, report to us directly. The positions would be built up with esteem and respect. We want the best person possible in these appointments that is going to be able to get on the ground and see what the student population wants.

The Heights: And how would you find people for those positions?

MS: That's something we would have to go about, as simple as putting up fliers up, like I said, building esteem for the position, really sell it, because it really is something that would be the most important part o f the executive cabinet.

BD: Right, and in potentially interviewing people, we'd really want to make sure that these people are really in tune with their specific class, and the problems, the issues of their specific class.

The Heights: What makes you qualified for the job?

BD: One of the things that is a strength is that we're outsiders to UGBC. We're not really held by any of the red tape that other people are. We're running because we're focusing on the issues here. The campaign we're running is purely substantive. We want people to elect us based on our platform, based on what we promise to do, and we're really running to usher in change, essentially to us the UGBC elections have been for too long really about who had the flashiest campaign, who spent the most money, who has the best t-shirts. That's now what the campaign should be about. It should be about who is the most qualified candidate for the job. And one of the main reasons we're running too is to slowly usher away the whole popularity [contest component] of the UGBC.

MS: I'd say also, qualification-wise, we're candidates of character and integrity, and those are, along with competence, the three most important traits of an executive leader. From my personal experience from my internship, I worked at a big corporation and I was ahead of all of the other interns, and we really had success in an initiative to bring forward the company and ours got selected from all the other intern groups. I feel Ben and I have that ability, like I said, character, integrity, and competence,to be effective leaders of the UGBC.

BD: Just to sum up, essentially our qualifications in on word is "real." We're real candidates.

MS: Our platforms are summed up by real. Our personality, or qualifications are real.

The Heights: What sets you apart?

BD: For one, definitely the way we're campaigning our goals sets us apart. One main thing is that our platform does not promise anything we can't do. For example, I've seen other platforms promise to extend bus hours, and while that is a good thing and it would be helpful to students, it's really not something you can actually accomplish. It doesn't take into account outside factors, such as bus drivers unions, extend hour working time. If we were campaigning just to win, for the pure sake of getting the position, we would be promising all these things that sound great, not lying, but things that would be nice but we can't really do. That's not what we're doing. We're not getting elected for that reason. We want to be elected because we can follow through with our promises.

MS: We're not attempting to disparage the other candidates' campaign styles, or the status quo of campaigning, we're just trying to set ourselves apart from them because we believe there really is something fake or superficial about it. Like I said before, elect a leader, not a t-shirt designer.

The Heights: How are you going about campaigning?

MS: Face-to-face, individual, incredibly personal interactions with students, whether it be in the dining hall, coming up and sitting with students and asking, ‘What do you think about this issue?' et cetera. It's nice to have signs in the quad and blare music. It's even nicer and more genuine and real to sit down with a student face to face and talk about real substantive stuff.

The Heights: What will you do if you lose?

MS: Let's be clear first, we're running for more than votes, we're running for change here, real change, positive change, that is, and we would endorse the candidate, even though we are the most real candidate, we would pick the second-most real candidate, and we're still going to remain politically active with UGBC, writing to The Heights about crucial issues and our real approaches to them.

BD: If we at least push the election towards a more substantive role in that the candidates start focusing more on the issues, and we accomplish at least that, then I'll say our campaign was successful.

The Heights: That's about it. Anything else?

MS: Three R's: reason, reasonableness, and realistic.