Undergraduate Student Government West executive ticket candidates disagreed on how to handle campus club requirements and the budget during Wednesday’s debate.
The USGW executive ticket debate was hosted by the organization's election commissioner on the West campus, outside of the Sun Devil Fitness Center, with dozens in attendance.
Both tickets — the Leonardi and Snider 2017 ticket — participated in the hour-and-a-half long debate, with members of both tickets present.
One of the main issues both tickets debated was how to handle club involvement and requirements for organizations on campus.
Attilio Kanakao‘olani Leonardi, business data analytics sophomore and candidate for USGW president, said his ticket will hone-in on requirements for clubs on the campus.
“Right now we’re really interested in looking at some of the older policies, specifically the policy on how many people you need to make a club and what accounts for … qualifying it as a club and getting funding,” Leonardi said.
He said some of the campus’ current policies on organizations are too lenient.
“Being able to tell how many people are active members of the club is just not as strict as we would like,” Leonardi said. “One of the policies we were thinking about is increasing the minimum amount of people in a club for it to be actually counted as a club here at ASU West campus.”
Contrasting Leonardi, Frank Melgar, business communication sophomore and Snider’s vice president of policy candidate, said a limit on clubs would eliminate them on campus.
“If we put a limit or a cap on how many people … have to be in the club to receive funding, there’d be like, four clubs only able to receive funding,” Melgar said. “So as far as that goes, I think we’re good on that part.”
Michael Childs, communication junior and Snider’s vice president of services candidate, said the ticket has plans to train clubs further and grow the campus’ bike co-op.
“We do our best to support clubs,” Childs said. “For facilities, we would like to continue supporting successful facilities like the bike co-op.”
Childs said the ticket is also looking into expanding health initiatives for students.
“We are also looking into health initiatives,” Childs said. “We will be getting condoms and dental dams more accessible to the students more than just at the health center.”
On the topic of growing clubs and campus facilities, Paul Max Putnam, biology junior and the Leonardi ticket’s vice president of services candidate, said they are aiming to defund the new bike co-op.
“We’re taking a lot of advice from other campuses that might not be able to be well implemented here on West campus,” Putnam said. “West campus you can walk from one side to the other in 10 minutes, there’s not really a need for bikes.”
Putnam also said the increased club member requirement will help organizations with funding.
“We’re going to try to cut down on some of these extraneous facilities and clubs that are sucking funding,” Putnam said. “... We know on this campus we have this problem where there’s a lack of involvement in a lot of clubs and a lot of events, so our idea is we’re going to take the successful ones, we’re going to increase the funding to them, while cutting back on a lot of these other, like I said, extraneous clubs that are not really as popular.”
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