Paul Sherar - Chief Photographer

(l-r) SGA presidential candidate Ryan Eller and running mate Ezell
Williams would like to appeal to the entire university community.

Eller, Williams built platform to ‘reach every aspect of community’

Chris Bohle - Staff Writer

When Ryan Eller and Ezell Williams were devising platform objectives for their campaign for Student Government Association president and vice president, they wanted to make sure every single goal was possible and practical.

“We get upset when we see platforms that are not accomplished,” said Eller. “Everything in our platform has the possibility of being achieved in the next year.”

Eller and Williams chose “empowerment” as their campaign theme, a premise the two realize is a little different from the average ticket.

“Appalachian students deserve a little more than just a catchy slogan,” said Eller. “We wanted to get across a more powerful message to students.”

In order to get this message across, the two candidates, as well as their campaign staff, painted tunnels, plastered walls with ads and handed out brochures throughout last week in order to inform the campus of their goals, and, according to Eller, to encourage students to get acquainted with the candidates.

“We wanted to get our name out there first, but we also wanted to remind students to come up and talk to us so they could get to know us a little better,” said Eller.

Eller and Williams hope this assertive campaigning will get more students involved in the election as a whole.

“We have to remind students to get out there and vote,” said Williams.

Eller concurred with his running mate, saying a surplus of voters would give the student body more voice in campus affairs.

“Administration and faculty pay attention to voter numbers,” said Eller. “The more people who vote, the more they will concern themselves with student issues.”

When the two were brainstorming on goals they wanted to see accomplished, they wanted a well-rounded platform that met the demands of all community members.

“We didn’t want to have a target campaign,” said Eller. “We wanted to make sure to reach out to every aspect of the community.”

With that in mind, Eller and Williams designed goals that were concerned with a whole range of issues, from campus parking to a new scholarship fund.

Specific goals include taking advantage of town council outlets, setting up a scholarship fund for underrepresented groups or those from a county in the Appalachian region, and beginning a service to notify students prior to their car being towed.

Although all of these objectives are viable, some will be easier said than done. Barry Sauls, director of Parking and Traffic, says the aforementioned notification service will be quite difficult to implement.

“For example, if a student is parked in someone else’s parking space, then that person usually wants their spot right then,” said Sauls. “And even if that’s not the case, then usually the student is in class, making it difficult to contact them.”

The ambition should by no means be abandoned, but it will be extremely difficult to carry out, said Sauls.

One of Eller and Williams’ other main platform goals is the improvement of relations between SGA senators and campus clubs by adding more required meetings between the groups.

“Senators are going to have to start going to one or more clubs, and each [SGA] cabinet member will probably have to go to a fraternity and sorority to assure equal representation,” said Williams.

Concerning the tuition increase situation, Eller and Williams both felt that it was not handled well by the state, and promised, if elected, they would do extensive lobbying over the summer to attempt to end the trend.

“Since these are state employees that we’re concerned with, it is up to the state to give them raises,” said Eller.

“And since ASU is going to most likely undergo further budget cuts for next year, we’ll essentially be paying more, but less money will be coming to the school.”

Eller and Williams felt the tuition problem was handled well by SGA this year but said students will have to be more vocal in the future if they hope to achieve change.

“This year we only touched the surface of what we could do,” said Eller. “We simply needed more involvement—we had a good effort, but we needed better.”

Eller and Williams remind students that with their completely feasible platform and combination of short-term and long-term goals, they are the pair fit for the job.

“We want our goals to be stepping stones to future prosperity at Appalachian,” said Eller.

Paul Sherar - Chief Photographer

(l-r) SGA vice presidential and presidential candidates Amy Dixon and William Foster say they will focus on all aspects of the student body.

Foster, Dixon platform focuses on ‘issues affecting everyone’

Bethel Barefoot - Chief Copy Editor

If William Foster and Amy Dixon are elected Student Government Association president and vice president, the duo wants to further build communication and strength into the foundation of student government and the surrounding university.

“There are definitely things we would like to improve upon,” said Foster. “We’d like to see better communication with the senators … We’d like to see stronger leadership in the senate. This year’s gone pretty well, but we’d like people to stick to their guns, not go one way, then switch back to another way.”

These plans are not just for senators, however.

“We’d like to stick to our guns, too,” said Foster.

Foster and Dixon also want to instill better communication with the student body by improving senator and constituency relationships.

“[We want to] make sure … constituencies and senators are communicating well and have every bit of information they could possibly get,” said Foster.

To combat past problems in this area, the two candidates want to have evaluation forms sent straight to the president of the senator’s constituency, so evaluations can be done more efficiently and the senator does not have to act as a middleman.

For themselves, as presidential and vice presidential hopefuls, the two said they would exude approachability to the student body as well as senators, if elected.

“Mainly [we want] to make ourselves accessible to students and have a friendly demeanor where everyone could come up to us,” said Dixon.
A good relationship with senators will be important to the duo’s efforts to implement their platform, if elected.

“Our list of goals is not as long as some of the others because we want there to be room for senators to bring in their ideas,” said Foster.
“We’re not the kind of end all be all of ideas.”

In preparing their platform, Dixon said out of the long list of areas they would like to change about Appalachian State University and student government, the two chose the ones that seemed feasible, that could be accomplished in one academic year and that would benefit all students, not just one select group.

“Our main focus was the issues at hand that everyone sees and complains about,” said Dixon.

Foster and Dixon also plan to use criticism of certain issues from the past as they address their platform goals, such as with the Student Discount Card.

“We’d like to put the businesses back on the discount card and have a sticker on the window of the places the discounts are at,” said Foster.

Each business listed on this year’s incarnation of the Discount Card received a sticker, said Marsha Moore, SGA director of External Affairs.

“Some of the outlet stores cannot display [the stickers] because it violates their lease,” said Moore.

In addition to the Discount Card, the issue on the candidates’ platform they feel is most important is getting construction on campus completed on schedule by increasing fines for overdue completion of a project.

“[We want to make sure] those fines get increased and construction gets done on time … if you get done on time, you can move on to the next project, and students aren’t inconvenienced for as long and [neither] are the faculty and staff,” said Foster.

Parking is another very visibly troubling aspect at Appalachian that Foster and Dixon address in their platform goals.

The pair’s plans include alleviating parking by bringing back the oral appeal system, adding $5 to permit fees to help cover the expense of hang tags and making parking free after 5 p.m. for students.

“[We want students to] get involved in clubs and organizations because most people don’t get involved that live off campus, or they have to get an Evening/Weekend pass and that’s 37 extra dollars a semester,” said Dixon.

However, this goal posed problems in the mind of Barry Sauls, director of Parking and Traffic.

“If we are going to make parking free after five o’clock, then students before five will have to pay a whole lot more,” said Sauls.

Students who park on campus after five are putting wear and tear on the facilities as well, said Sauls.

Other issues included on the candidates’ platform are alleviating overcrowding in dorms, supporting the rental textbook system, keeping tuition stable and establishing a relationship with Staff Council.

The future holds uncertainties for Foster and Dixon, but if elected, their leadership promises to be different than the past administrations, and they plan to take criticisms of student government and use them to make things better, if elected.

“We will take any criticism constructively and use it to better student government,” said Dixon. “We are gonna try to start out getting all of our campaign goals hammered out and have them on a timeline where they are completed in a timely order and not just put aside.”

Paul Sherar - Chief Photographer

(l-r) SGA presidential and vice presidential hopefuls Larry Smith and Allison Laffin say they have taken on feasible goals for their campaign.

Smith, Laffin believe in action coupled with feasible goals

Carrie Baker - Staff Writer

Armed with the promise of “feasible goals that do not raise student fees,” Student Government Association candidates Larry Smith and Allison “Alli” Laffin have set out on the campaign trail with a cost-conscious platform.

“Our goals are aware of the money in students’ pockets,” said Laffin.
“Our goals are feasible. When student fees come into play in other campaigns, it questions the feasibility of their platforms.”

Topping their list of goals is a plan to install a student activist committee that will keep track of state affairs. Dr. Gregory Blimling, vice chancellor for Student Development, has agreed to meet regularly with the proposed committee to discuss future tuition increases.

“Dr. Blimling told us to look for the state budget deficit problem to be worse in future years,” said Smith. “[The committee] will keep up on state affairs with the Board of Governors absorbing the situation with the state budget,” said Laffin.

Laffin said the committee would be comprised of appointed senators from the Student Government Association but would not be limited to the senators.

Smith and Laffin said they plan to create an application process open to any Appalachian State University student interested in the committee. “Anyone who is part of the student body is part SGA and has the right to know what’s going on and be active,” said Smith.

“[The committee] will be a direct connection to know what’s going on between the two entities of the student body and the administration and give students direct input,” said Smith.

The duo said plans for the committee are not set in stone, however.

“We may see an organization branch off of the committee. We are keeping possibilities open,” said Smith. “Everyone has thoughts and we want to hear them.”

As it is hinted to in the candidates’ slogan “Putting the YOU Back into ASU, ” diversity and unification of the Appalachian student body is also at the top of Smith and Laffin’s list of concerns.

“We don’t want more talk about diversification, we want to do something,” said Smith.

One goal the candidates hope to pursue in order to promote diversity is co-sponsorship of SGA with smaller organizations.

Both candidates said they believe co-sponsorship will help smaller organizations, especially minority clubs and organizations “promote events and their culture.”

Both candidates said they feel the need for better development of diversity on campus. “The committee that was started [to promote diversity] has had little impact yet. We want to help push their efforts along,” said Smith.

Dino Dibernardi, director of the Center for Student Involvement and Leadership would not comment on the feasibility of the co-sponsorship goal, but did say SGA has worked collaboratively with other organizations in the past and has done well.

Smith and Laffin also said they see a need for “higher student morale.”
To bring this about the pair are looking to create an “adopt-a-team” program.

The candidates look to create an opportunity for any club or organization to advocate an athletics team at Appalachian that needs more student support. “We want to see more school spirit and student involvement on campus,” said Laffin.

The duo’s next goal looks to save both Appalachian and students’ money. Both candidates said they had taken note of the insufficiency of the coupon print allowance program. Coupons giving students a $6 print allowance were placed in each student’s post office box at the beginning of the semester, said Smith. Smith saw that students might have not received their coupon or inadvertently thrown it away.

Smith and Laffin want to correct the distribution problem by creating a more efficient way to issue the coupons. One of their ideas includes placing the money for the print allowance on an extra account on students’ existing ID cards.

Dr. Doug May, director of Academic Computing Services, said the goal to change the ID cards is “perfectly feasible,” but will not be able to occur in the next two years. May said the current contract holders for the student ID have recently extended the contract for two more years and will not change the current format of the cards.

“We are looking for a way to improve the distribution of the allowance system,” said May.

Another goal in the duo’s platform is the development of an Asian language minor at Appalachian. “We have seen a desire among students for a minor in Asian languages,” said Laffin. “We want to create more student support and show our interest in getting the new minors,” said Laffin.

Both candidates feel their prior involvement, leadership roles and approachability have given them the experience needed to handle the jobs of president and vice president.

Both agree that dedication to current goals will be important for any candidate who is elected.

“It’s easy for other candidates to have goals now, but when it comes down to it, you have to carry through, and Larry and I will do that,” said Laffin.

“We don’t have all the answers, but if it’s feasible, we can get it done,” said Smith.