By Christina Smith

As the Student Government Association (SGA) elections approach, it is important for the student body to be informed about where each candidate stands. The Chronicle sat down with all four of the presidential and vice presidential nominees to ensure the campus makes an educated vote on April 22 and 23.

The Weitzberg/Berry ticket:

Brian Weitzberg, a junior who is a political science major and one of the presidential nominees, is no stranger to the race, as he was the SGA president for the 2008-2009 academic year. His running mate, junior Jared Berry, who is a music education major, also has election experience as he is the current SGA vice president. However, experience is not the only thing they have backing their ticket.

Weitzberg said he is a big proponent of co-sponsorships, which are events thrown and sponsored by several clubs and organizations together. According to Weitzberg, they did 23 co-sponsorships last year, mostly with clubs and organizations that had never done anything together before.

“By working together [clubs] are showing the different cultures people come from and the different things that they try to do for the student body,” Weitzberg said.”

Building on the ideas of working closer with clubs, Wietzberg and Berry are both dedicated to bettering the relationship with the Greek life community.

Specifically, Berry said that it is important for the SGA to stand behind the Greeks during the upcoming renovation of the Student Center, which would result in a renovation of the Rathskellar. He said that he planned to “make sure their voices, specifically, are heard” in the renovation.

“We want to make sure all of [the Rat] remains in-tact and at the same time hopefully gets updated,” Berry said.

Wietzberg added that there was a possibility to build “a very tight bond” between the SGA and the approximate 800 University students who make up the Greek community.

Overall, though, Berry and Wietzberg stand for working with all clubs and organizations in general. “We could be here [for clubs and organizations] to help them and show our support for them,” Weitzberg said.

Berry, however, admitted that there is just as big a need to get all students in general more informed about SGA and with the school in general because, “unfortunately less than half of the undergraduate student body participates in these clubs and organizations.”

With this in mind, Berry said that he planned to launch an “SGA campaign,” which would launch information and resources to students about why SGA is here. “We need to start targeting all students here,” he said.

Another facet of the Weitzberg/Berry ticket is their idea to create transparency in the communication between students and administrators. Already, they said the administration had heard student voices about the problems with financial aid and student accounts, resulting in a combination of the two offices.

Berry said that through a relationship with Vice President Jessica Eads from enrollment management,” they will work to build a bill of rights committee for this new office, known as Student Financial Services.

Weitzberg added that building a better relationship between students and administrators will get rid of the “bitter taste in the mouth” between the groups.

Both candidates are also proponents of implementing community outreach programs, such as donating money to a local school district; expanding student involvement in athletic events, creating new ways of getting involved in SGA, and both agree on voting against the proposed Off-Campus Code of Conduct.

The Hutchinson/Mellis ticket:

On the opposing ticket, Senator Sean Hutchinson, a junior who is a marketing major and SGA Rules Committee Chair Akeem Mellis, a junior who is a political science and print journalism major, are bringing many of the same policies to the table – but with a spin.

Hutchinson said a major part of their campaign is working on the networking between clubs, organizations, SGA, administration and other students. Hutchinson has combined all these possibilities into the idea of affinity groups. Using a system he observed during his internship with Music Television (MTV), Hutchinson created student affinity groups to ensure that students are being represented from as many angle as possible.

According to current SGA President Peter DiSilvio, an affinity group will be sort of like a lobbyist group. It will assign senators to specific clubs and groups and types of students, so students can be represented in three or four different ways, rather than only one, as they are under the current policy.

“We’ve begin to forget that our main function is to serve the student body,” Hutchinson said, “and when you lose that then you start to misrepresent the student body.”

Mellis touched base on the idea that the SGA must communicate better with students and let them know what the SGA is doing and that they even exist. He added that he would like to put less emphasis on internal SGA issues so that more time can be spent focusing on resolutions and things that actually affect the student body.

“We need to show and do this by having SGA atrium tables every week during common hour,” Mellis said. “This way, students who may not know what’s going on can come up to our table and ask questions.” He said that these questions can be answered through press releases from the public relations chair and that further student input can be obtained through an SGA suggestion box.

Hutchinson and Mellis also stood against the Off-Campus Code of Conduct; emphaized a better and stronger relationships with both the Greek community and administrators; advocated for better communication with Lackmann foods; and expressed interest in helping club sports teams gain more support from the student body.

But what do Hutchinson and Mellis bring to the table that their opponents do not?

According to Mellis, he can provide the fair interpretation how things are run in Senate that is required of the vice president and that he is someone who wants to share knowledge with everyone else. “I bring more of a strong knowledge in terms of internal structure of SGA,” he said, “so when Sean brings in his side with reforms, I can take that and fit it in.”

Hutchson said that although his opponents both have presidential and vice presidential experience, the importance of the race truly comes from consistency of SGA performance. “From the moment that I joined SGA I have never stopped working,” he said. “At the end of the day someone has to win and someone has to lose, but my pupose is still to help and represent the student body and to work with them to make sure they achieve the best things possible.”