USG meet and greet suffered from low attendance

Despite online promotion, only one student attended the USG Candidate Meet and Greet in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center on Wednesday evening.

At the event, USG candidates gathered for an informal networking event.  Students had the opportunity to individually meet the presidential, vice presidential and senatorial candidates to ask them specific questions about their platforms.

USG had booked the room from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. The Director of Elections and Recruitment Kandace London, however, determined there wasn’t enough interest in the event and officially dismissed the meet and greet at 7:30 p.m.

“We didn’t want to waste any of the candidates time,” said Christine Hennes, USG senior director of communications.

Candidates had the option of remaining in the room until 8 p.m. when the room reservation expired.

One student arrived at the event after 7:30 p.m., though by that point, only presidential ticket Providence Ilisevich and Ehren Elder were present.

“In all honesty, it was mostly just candidates at the event,” Rini Sampath, USG presidential candidate and current USG vice president, said. “But, I guess one thing that definitely showed was that we need to reach out to more students to come to these events. Elections and recruitments have done a phenomenal job, but, definitely getting students to become more interested in student government [is important].”

Instead, Sampath and Jordan Fowler, USG vice presidential candidate, said that the candidates utilized the time to meet the other tickets running.

“The meet and greet was really fun because we got to sit down and meet the other people running,” Fowler said. “Not just the presidential tickets, which are the people I’m more familiar with, but those who were running for Senate.”

Eric Suen, a junior majoring in economics who was the one student to attend the event, explained that he heard about the meet and greet because he is a member of a USG committee.

He commented that the low student attendance correlates to the lack of university-wide promotion for the USG election.

“Right now, the student body isn’t as serious as [USG would] like [it] to be.”

Elder attributed the low student attendance at USG election events to the fact that three events were scheduled for consecutive days.

“We had an incredible turnout last night with the diversity debate and I’m expecting to see another incredible turnout tomorrow [for the presidential debate],” Elder said. “ It’s tough to ask so many students to come out three nights in a row.”

Illisevich seemed to be sure that students would participate in the election.

“Students are still engaged in these elections and the elections and recruitment teams put a lot of effort into everything they do,” Ilisevich said. “I know they’ll do a great job with the booths on campus. They’ve also made it really easy because you can vote online now and I think a lot of students will use the opportunity.”

Suen said the candidate meet and greet event ultimately helped him decide which candidate he wanted to vote for.

“I’m very glad I talked to them, because they are also students that want to have changes,” Suen said. “Every year the presidents change and I want to know if they’re actually going to bring changes. I just really wanted to get some personal one on one time. The way [the candidates] carry themselves gives me a good impression of them.”