On April 1, the Undergraduate SGA Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates attended the Ramblin’ With debates hosted by the Technique and SGA. Alex Bandes and Yvonne Ploder, Dillon Roseen and Brandie Banner and Conrad Rybka answered questions and debated campus issues. After opening statements, candidates responded to questions from the moderators.
Question 1: What deliverables have you accomplished during your time at Tech for the student body to qualify you to be SGA President and Executive Vice President?
Bandes response delved into his time working in dining services and establishing late night healthy options in dining halls after negations with Sodexo. Between Bandes and Ploder, there are five years of experience in all three cabinets of SGA.
Roseen touched on his experience as a member of FreshGA all the way to being this years SGA Director of Internal Affairs, while Banner has most of her experience outside of SGA such as starting up campus closets and service projects through FASET.
Rybka explained how neither he or his running mate Donovan Shuman have experience in SGA but their experience on various executive boards outside of SGA has prepared them to step into these roles.
Question 2: How do you plan to use your position as SGA president and executive VP to represent and push student body interests to BOR and the state legislature?
Roseen stressed the importance of continuing polling like this years SGA did with the smoking ban and advocating for what a majority of campus wants with state legislature.
Rybka wants to do a better job of reaching out to all students and not just those involved with SGA or greek life on campus in order to show that SGA does care about those students too.
While Bandes wants to continue polling but move beyond that and have more conversations with students in person to really gauge student interests and take those interests on to the capitol. Bandes and Ploder stressed communication as the key to success.
Question 3: Given that half of the student body was not in accord with the smoking ban on campus, how do you plan to address this portion of the student body?
Rybka explained that SGA needs to show students on both sides that SGA careas about their opinion. and propose alternatives for those that opposed this.
Ploder and Bandes both said that the best thing to be is realistic and not sugar coat what is going to happen next year on campus as the BOR is adamant about the ban.
Roseen and Banner talked about their idea for an “Out of Office Hours” initiative for engaging students more outside of the classroom and traditional SGA office hours to really discuss where the student body stands on campus issues.
The format for questions and debate continued on through the allotted hour with additional questions to each candidate from the moderators as well as a portion of the debate where candidates posed questions of their choice to each other and provided answers on the spot.