The absence of competition for Student Association elections left presidential and comptroller candidates speaking to a nearly empty auditorium Wednesday night.

Presidential candidate Neal Casey and comptroller candidate Jeff Rickert spoke to a handful of assembly members in Gifford Auditorium for SA’s annual debate leading up to election week. Although both candidates are uncontested, the debate was meant to be a forum for questions for the candidates from students.

A student panel was expected to question both candidates, but due to unforeseen circumstances, no panel was present at the debate, SA President Jon Barnhart said. Instead, a majority of questions asked came from student organization leaders that were collected prior to the debate.

Rickert began by explaining his platform, which consists of three goals to improve the budget process: allow funds to roll over from spring to fall semesters, fund student travel and implement a budget reform committee.

Under the current system, student organizations can roll over funding from the fall semester to the spring semester, but not from the spring semester to the fall semester. Rickert hopes to change this.

‘I really don’t think that makes sense,’ Rickert said. ‘We’re going to work on fixing that, and that’ll make a lot of groups happier.’

Current SA codes also prevent the Finance Board from funding student travel, which means the board often has to deny funding for potentially good programs, such as community service-based programs, Rickert said.

Rickert also said he wants to create a student-run budget reform committee to improve the budget process as a whole to benefit student organizations.

New York Public Interest Research Group sent in a question about what the biggest issue the funding process faces is and how Rickert intends to fix it if re-elected.

Rickert said the main problem is that SA does not have enough money to fund everyone. This year, the Finance Board received $1.3 million in funding requests, but only $700,000 is available to distribute to organizations.

Rickert plans to solve this by focusing more on the merit of the programs that need funding.

‘I have the power to increase the fee, but it’s not reasonable right now, especially at a school like SU,’ Rickert said. ‘Students are all strapped for cash.’

Casey spoke shortly after Rickert. His campaign focus is on putting students first and including them in campus decisions.

‘We need to make sure that our goals as students and both the administration and the university align,’ he said.

Casey said he would like to improve the budget process and find ways to make more money available to student organizations. He also said he wants to make SA into a result-based organization that focuses on its accomplishments rather than what it could do.

One question an audience member wrote also asked, ‘It’s December 31st, 2011. Name three things your administration has accomplished.’

Casey said his goals are to lay the groundwork for an eventual tobacco-free program on campus, make the new MayFest into a successful tradition and improve the budget process.

Students can vote for SA president, comptroller and assembly members on MySlice from Nov. 8 to Nov. 11.

lgleveil@syr.edu

Published on November 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Laurence: lgleveil@syr.edu | @lgleveille