Correction appended.
The executives for the three tickets for 2017-18 Student Senate election participated in a debate focused on how Senate could best represent the student body Monday night in the Bobcat Student Lounge.
The debate, which was the first of the Senate campaign, was moderated by the judicial panel. The three tickets running in this year's election are Voice, Fight and Green Light. The president, vice
One of the biggest issues discussed during this debate was how Senate can become a better resource for students.
David Parkhill, presidential candidate on the Fight ticket, mentioned during his opening statements that only 12.5 percent of the student body voted in senate elections last year.
“I think this shows that students don’t go to Student Senate when they want their problems solved,” Parkhill, OU College Republican president, said. “They don’t care to take a part in the democracy that we have the right to take a part in here.”
Parkhill wants senate to turn into a bobcat student solution center by becoming a place that students come to with their issues. He hopes that if students start to use senate as a problem solver, Senate can gain power when advocating for issues in front of the Board of Trustees and administration.
“When we go to the Board of
The Fight campaign is entirely external, meaning not a single candidate is currently in senate. Their ticket is be led by Parkhill, vice presidential candidate Allison Huedepohl and treasurer candidate Caleb Cline.
Nicole Schneider, vice presidential candidate on the Green Light
Red platform points are things the university is doing now that they want to redirect or stop, yellow platform points are things that they want to look more closely at and green platform points are new ideas they want to introduce to students.
“We also want to bring more unity as a Bobcat family,” Schneider, senator-at-large, said. “The recent things that have been going on our campus show that are all these factions that we need to fix and we need to have conversations so that we can unite around that.”
Green Light presidential candidate Landen Lama, Schneider and treasurer candidate Zachary Woods have each served in senate for two years.
The Voice ticket mentioned during the debate how they want students to be more active in s
“These would be Student Senate sponsored events that would allow students to get together, especially Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, to give us an alternative to what we generally think of Athens,” Dane Hudson, treasurer candidate on the Voice ticket, said.
The Voice campaign is headed by presidential candidate Jordan Kelley, who also ran for president on the Impact ticket last year. Vice presidential candidate Keyarah Newton serves on the Black Affairs Commission, and Hudson is not in senate.
The next Student Senate election debate will be the academic college senator debate Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Seigfred 401.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated information about who moderated the debate. The article has been updated with the most accurate information.
