As annual elections enter their final week, student body presidential and vice presidential candidates came together last night to discuss their ideas for the upcoming year.
The crowd peaked at 30 students during the presidential debate, although many attendees were identifiable members of the Student Assembly itself.
The format of the debate consisted of several parts, including one in which the candidates briefly introduced themselves and then answered questions posed first by moderator and 2001 Class Council President Charles Gussow and then by members of the audience.
While presidential candidate Michael Sevi '01, who is running under the slogan "the end of Student Assembly, the beginning of student government" reiterated his plans to "overhaul" the existing Assembly, candidate Molly Stutzman '02 stated her desire to maintain many of the Assembly's structures that she feels work well.
Stutzman presented her two years of experience on the Assembly as an asset.
Sevi, a transfer student, served on student government at his previous university, but has never attended a meeting of Dartmouth's Assembly.
"I know what changes need to be made, and I know what changes won't work," Stutzman said.
"It wouldn't make sense just to scrap the whole thing," she added later.
Sevi said that, whatever the outcome of the upcoming elections, he would view the results as a student referendum.
"I'm taking this as a public pledge," he said, adding that if elected he would act as if the entire student body were behind the sweeping changes he proposed in his seven points.
Throughout the debate, Assembly insiders grilled both Sevi '02 and his running mate, vice-presidential hopeful Aly Rahim '02, on their plans for the upcoming year.
One audience member accused the Sevi-Rahim ticket of "raping" the current Assembly with their "inflammatory" rhetoric. Another called their 7-point campaign platform "substance-free."
Ted Smith '02, the third presidential candidate, did not attend the debate.
According to Chair of the Election Planning and Advisory Committee Margaret Kuecker '01, Smith said his campaign manager advised him against it.
In the equally passionate vice-presidential debate, candidates hotly debated the issue of representativeness.
Rahim challenged the current level of representativeness on the Assembly, referring to it as the "critical plank of [his] campaign."
"Successive unanimous votes are not examples of representative government," he said.
Thus Rahim promised that, if elected, he would make each of the leadership positions on the Assembly open to campus-wide candidacy and election.
Vice-presidential candidate Michael Newton '04 proposed an alternative mode of increasing representation.
Newton hopes to create a Steering Committee consisting of leaders of student organizations in order to aid him in his goal of "making Student Assembly a more cohesive voice for students."
"This is something that has been tried at other school and has worked," he said.
"If you really want more representation on this campus you have to bring these groups together," he added.
Vice-presidential candidate Amit Anand '03 said he would tackle the issue by working to make the Assembly more inclusive.
"We're not the House of Representatives or the Senate," he said, adding that the Sevi-Rahim suggestion of making most positions elected would only make the organization seem more exclusive to outsiders.
His own platform took a different locus, however.
"One of the fundamental points of my campaign is to focus Student Assembly more," he said.
Rather than focusing on a several issues at a time as the Assembly has in the past, Anand said he would like to see the Assembly delve deeply into only a "handful" of such issues.
