With less than one day left before today's elections, most of the candidates running for Student Assembly President and Vice President took part in a final question-and-answer forum last night at the Assembly's weekly meeting.
The Assembly also passed a resolution to designate the proposed "Unity Barbecue" as this term's $1,000 campus-unifying event.
The presidential candidates who appeared at the meeting included Jorge Miranda '01, Meg Smoot '01 and Alex Wilson '01. Vice presidential candidates included Chance Hill '01 and Molly Stutzman '02.
The question-and-answer forum, which follows on the heels of a debate on Monday night and a discussion last Thursday, was similar in that each gave a brief opening speech and then responded to questions posed by members of the Assembly.
In their opening statements, the candidates reiterated their basic platforms. One of the first questions was posed to the vice presidential candidates, asking them how they would deal with membership requirements for the Assembly next year.
Stutzman said that not all the positions in the Assembly should be elected because it would then be largely constituted by "a specific type of person."
Instead, she said, the key to becoming representative would be communication between members of the Assembly and their constituent groups.
Stutzman told The Dartmouth after the meeting that an important element of having the Assembly become more representative would be to make sure Assembly members took a proactive part in gauging the opinions of their constituent groups.
Hill agreed for the most part, but said that a critical review of Assembly membership would be necessary and suggested that more than two positions be elected by the whole student body, as well as possibly creating ex officio positions for leaders of campus cultural organizations.
At one point during the meeting, an Assembly member asked Wilson what his first step would be to tackle diversity issues on campus, one of three main points in Wilson's platform.
Wilson said that he would first go to members of the Dartmouth community who have been working on diversity-related issues outside of the Assembly and convince them that the Assembly was now a place that was ready to attack these issues head on and work on them constantly.
"I don't know all the issues. I don't have a feel for all the issues," Wilson said, but added that he does know the people who do.
It was also pointed out that Wilson's plan to restrict membership into the Assembly seemed to clash with efforts to ameliorate campus diversity issues.
Wilson pointed out that there were only six people of color in the room and asked, "Is this representative?"
He said the key is not having more people on the Assembly, but being able to tap into different resources on campus. The candidates agreed that next year will be an important time for the Assembly, largely because of the timing of the implementation of the Student Life Initiative.
Miranda said the Assembly is experiencing an evolution into a better, more representative organization, but that there is still much to be done.
Near the end of the meeting, several candidates and Assembly members expressed feelings of frustration towards The Dartmouth's lack of candidate endorsement.
Many felt the un-endorsement only propagated the feeling that the Student Assembly is perceived as a joke by many students. Not present at the candidate forum were presidential candidate Alex Grishman '01 and Jack-O-Lantern running mates Brett Quimby '02 and Jacob Osterhout '02, candidates for the positions of president and vice president, respectively. The Assembly also announced at the meeting that when the current supply of condoms in campus vending machines runs low, they will be restocked with a higher quality, non-generic brand.
