SGA Debate

This Wednesday, the Student Government Association (SGA) held its annual Presidential Debate between the candidates for President and Vice President of Operations (VPO). The tickets running for office include Samanta Molla and Adrian Castellanos, Brandon Seidman and Simon Pepa, and E.J. Hannah and Jason Buckman.

Hosted in EAS 222, the room was filled with various campaigners and supporters. Hannah and Buckman supporters populated the far end of the room, carrying two large cutouts of their heads. Seidman sported a ‘Hannah & Buckman’ sticker on his iPad, and Pepa relaxed before the debate by playing with a piece of silly putty. SITTV recorded and live-streamed the event for those who could not come in person, and the entire debate can be found on their YouTube channel.

Each ticket had 3 minutes for opening statements, 2 minutes to respond to the questions prepared prior to the debate, and 1 minute for rebuttals and for audience questions. The audience could submit questions by writing their thoughts on an index card which was then given to the moderators. Each set of candidates cycled through responding first to the questions to ensure fairness.

The debate began at 9:20 p.m. and covered a variety of issues on campus, including mental health services for students, more transparency and communication between the SGA, the student body, and the administration, construction, sustainability, and more.

Mental health was a frequent topic of discussion. The lack of an update on President Farvardin’s Mental Health Task Force, which was supposed to be released in October, and, according to Seidman, the “horror stories” he’s heard about Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), demonstrate the students’ frustrations and hopes in regards to how the school can better handle its mental health services.

Buckman claimed that a lot of ideas need to be discussed, and that students should be comfortable and able to talk with faculty about mental health. To improve conditions, they plan on having faculty take mandatory mental health training modules as well as making Stevens a more comfortable environment by adding a garden, a mural, and more in order to keep the campus aesthetically pleasing in face of the ongoing construction.

Molla hopes to increase communication between the SGA and administration in order to keep track of their efforts on improving conditions. They also hope to work with CAPS to continue to improve their capabilities and add mental health modules on Canvas, as well as adding and preserving more green spaces on campus, as the school moves forward with construction.

Another topic that arose frequently was transparency. Throughout the debate, all candidates made it clear that additional communication between the administration, the SGA, and the student body is a necessity.

Molla claims that the administration has not been as transparent as they could be, citing the lack of communication on the Mental Health Task Force update. Castellanos thinks that administrators are usually willing to sit down and talk with students, but students don’t currently feel like they are able to reach out to the administrators, and the SGA has to bridge this gap.

Seidman had a more positive perspective on teaching professors, since they are typically available for office hours and easy to contact, but considers it very difficult to communicate with other administrators. He cited the relatively recent discovery that Peer Leaders had not been paid for their work as revealed by a previous article in The Stute, and was shocked by the lack of communication both within and outside of the administration on this issue. Pepa also stated that the administration usually does things and then tells students after.

Hannah and Buckman discussed the lack of transparency in regard to IT in the aftermath of the ransomware attack, and would hope that the administration would keep the student body more updated with how the recovery process is going, such as the steps that are being taken to set up permanent WiFi. They also hope to improve transparency within the SGA, since the SGA acts as a channel of communication between the student body and the administration, and hope to improve communication between the administration and the student body directly.

Below are candidate responses to one of the many questions posed at the debate. The full video can be seen on the SITTV YouTube channel, and voters are encouraged to view the debate there to get more information on each ticket and their platform.

What is the most important issue on campus, and how would you work to solve it?

Hannah: We think the most important issue surrounding our community right now is mental health… Our university has extremely high credit requirements, and to balance that with our other commitments makes it very challenging… It isn’t very fair to have a classroom where something like mental health isn’t supported and expect Stevens to say that they are in support of it.

Buckman: One thing that we want to do is improve campus culture, whether it’s painting murals under the bleachers on the columns, so when students are walking to class they have something nice to look at, or improving lawn furniture, making places for students to hang out around campus.
M

Molla: Most issues that we have now revolve around health and wellness and around academics, and they kind of go hand-in-hand, they very much intersect in terms of how one affects the other. We want to be able to build the academic program here at Stevens so that you feel confident in knowing that you are in a great physical, mental, and emotional state to be able to pursue your degree and know that there’s value to it.–

Castellanos: And to add to that, other things that we often overlook that pertain to mental health, things like housing that people struggle with at Stevens… the lack of dining options, things like that, in the long run, they do add up, and those are things that we want to work to change.–

Seidman: I’d say just about everything is our problem at Stevens currently. Our registering was crazy… Canvas is currently down, construction all over campus, I’ve heard of people almost getting hit by the… shuttles and having shuttle problems in the last couple days. I’d pretty much say if you could name a single part of our school, we would probably have a problem with it.

Pepa: And also, part of it is the SGA… I would guarantee that a majority of people in this room [have] not talked to their senator, or almost anyone in the SGA whatsoever.

Seidman: Not your classic people running, but we’re gonna do stuff.