Voting opened today for student government elections across all four ASU campuses. Here on the Tempe campus, the last several weeks have seen many well-developed campaigns compete for the future leadership of Undergraduate Student Government. Students vying to be the future USG Senators of their respective colleges have demonstrated the level of preparation befitting of the leadership of our school.
The Presidential race, in which candidates for the Student Body president, vice president of Public Policy and vice president of Services run together as a ticket, has lacked this competitiveness. In fact, only the Miller, Fullford, Felthouse ticket has demonstrated the commitment to excellence and professionalism that is so essential to serve in USG’s highest offices.
From the first day of the campaign for President, the election has been marred by a lack of professionalism. Through an almost ironic process of social Darwinism, the Hollman ticket was eliminated from contention before the election had even begun because they turned in their application materials late. This left only two tickets: the Zlaket, Becker, Hanlon ticket and Miller, Fullford, Felthouse (I for one am glad that my future President, whether it be Miller or Zlaket, was able to turn in his application on time).
Yet the past weeks have clearly shown that Miller and his ticket are more than prepared to serve as leaders of our community.
While it is tempting to laud the individual accolades of Miller, Fullford and Felthouse, this means of analysis would be unfair. Zlaket and the other members of his ticket are just as devoted to our school as the members of the MFF ticket. Zlaket has served as a USG Senator just as Miller has, and both candidates for the VP of Services and Public Policy have demonstrated leadership in the past.
The only fair way to examine this campaign is to evaluate the platforms of the competing tickets. The proposed platform crafted by Miller, Fullford and Felthouse is unquestionably the best policy proposal presented to ASU voters in this election.
The two ticket’s platforms do share some similarities, such as campus safety, increased sustainable practices and improved counseling services for students. But the differences between the platforms reveals a stark difference in quality. While the Zlaket platform devotes extensive time to improved conveniences (like 24-hour coffee shops and 10 pages of free printing), the Miller ticket attempts to address the fundamental problems facing college campuses across the nation.
The Miller ticket has proposed gender-neutral bathrooms and housing; it has proposed improved sexual education training, which could potentially incorporate improved education during freshman orientation rather than ineffective online modules that students view as a nuisance; it has proposed increasing accessibility to the vote by making student IDs acceptable forms of voter identification. Each of these proposals touches on a societal issue of national significance as it pertains to ASU campus life. I’ll vote for that.
In contrast, Zlaket wants to expand the gym. Last I checked, it’s fairly large, and so I won’t vote for that.
Moreover the Miller ticket even has better proposals on the issues that the tickets both agree are important. While the Zlaket wants to improve sustainable practices on campus, the Miller Ticket has concrete ideas of how to improve. This includes eliminating paper receipts from the dining halls and creating a new liaison between USG and the School of Sustainability at ASU.
Perhaps the most striking difference between the two campaigns is the professionalism of the tickets. As an example, the campaign video produced by the Miller Ticket clearly and effectively explains the nature of their platform. In addition, it represents a diverse cross section of students (the campaign hopes to promote diversity), including some of the student leaders that have contributed to the Miller tickets many prominent endorsements.
By contrast, the Zlaket ticket produced a video that features students in Zlaket shirts dancing around campus; As a voter, it’s hard to not be disappointed by Zlaket.
I already voted for the Miller, Fullford, Felthouse ticket today. If you have not voted, I highly encourage you to do the same before voting ends tomorrow.
Reach the columnist at clmurph5@asu.edu or follow @ConnorLMurphy on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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