The six candidates seeking the SGA’s highest offices gathered for a debate Thursday in The Volunteer Channel studios.
Vice presidential candidates Doug White of Volunteer Pride, M.G. Bailey of the Truth and Adam Prater of Volunteer Voice addressed the audience with the focus of their platforms.
Answering the question about how to keep the student voice heard, Bailey said the most important factor was strong leadership.
“Attitude reflects leadership,” Bailey said. “The SGA (executive committee) and the people that sit on (the Student Senate executive committee) should be held responsible first of all. They need to make sure the senators are on top of their games.
“The second part is the senators making sure they keep their office hours, talk to the business fraternities … (and) social associations with the residents halls to make sure they talk to all the clubs that fall under their umbrella.”
When the issue of funding was raised, Prater said cutbacks should be made at the administrative level to have less of an effect on the student body.
“The funding issue is something that, I think, really permeates the atmosphere,” Prater said. “We have tuition hikes (and) budget cuts that really have a detrimental effect on our education. It’s difficult to pinpoint something that doesn’t affect students.
“We should have administrative cuts because that would have less of an effect on students.”
Later in the debate, when addressing student apathy toward SGA, Doug White said the problem was catching students early.
“We want to better the freshmen community,” White said. “Apathy is a problem on this campus … It starts when you are a freshman … we need to get (students) involved at a young age to get rid of that apathy.”
Following the vice presidential debates, presidential candidates Sarah Keeton of Volunteer Voice, Tony White of the Truth and Matt McDonald of Volunteer Pride each took turns answering questions from the panel of students and faculty.
The presidential candidates all discussed the issue of the UT administration hearing the student voice. McDonald said “connectivity” between senators and students was vital to improving that voice.
“We do feel that once we are able to connect our senators with their constituency in a direct and efficient manner, we will be much more able to handle the questions and issues of the student body and hand those to President (John W.) Shumaker,” McDonald said.
Tony White also said working with administration was important and hoped to show the university’s budget to students in a simplistic form.
“One thing we are targeting in our campaign is a topic called ‘Money Matters,'” Tony White said. “We want to show the university’s spending limits – break it down in to layman’s terms.”
While addressing a call-in question, Keeton explained her party’s plan to give students a more effective voice when dealing with the UT administration.
“We do not feel like we are in control of the decisions that are made that affect us,” White said. “That’s why Volunteer Voice has chosen the empowerment plan with three feasible solutions to that problem.”
Keeton said those solutions are being an active voice for students to the legislature, gaining control of the student activities fee and creating a permanent position on the UT Board of Trustees.
The debates will re-air on TVC through Wednesday.
