Brian Manzullo

On Wednesday, candidates for president and vice president of the Student Government Association held a press conference in the Lake St. Clair Room of the Bovee University Center.

Sarah Lechota and Stephanie Glidden

Sarah Lechota is part of the Student Environmental Alliance and Stephanie Glidden has had no previous SGA experience, but feels she can overcome that by representing the younger voice on campus.

“I will represent that younger voice,” Glidden said. “I don’t have the CMU Promise. I know where they’re coming from.”

The pair is looking to work on the continued fixing up of buildings, making campus safer for bikers, and increasing bike racks for students. Another goal is fixing Central Michigan University’s Web site.

“Our Web site is incredibly hard to navigate through,” Glidden said.

Brandyn Lawson and John Reineke

The pair plans to fight for implementation of the four-year plan for all students, instead of just Honors Program students.

The four-year plan would assist students in planing their college careers. This would make it easier to graduate on time, John Reineke said.

Reineke holds student government leadership positions and works between 30 to 40 hours a week as a manager in a residential restaurant on-campus.

They also would like to make textbook listings available earlier in the hope that they can buy books online to drive down prices for on-campus bookstores that would compete with online stores.

Unified use of Blackboard is another idea the two have.

“Those classes (that use Blackboard) are easier,” Reineke said. “I know Grand Valley has a mostly unified board. We can do that here.”

Tim Popma and Bob Simmons

The two seek to be a transparent pair, said Tim Popma. Their goals are to focus on sustainability and communication.

To work on sustainability, they would look at things such as how much food is wasted in the cafeteria and find ways to fix it, Simmons said.

Under Popma and Bob Simmons, they say communication would also be looked at.

“We want to look at aspects of better communication between registered organizations,” Simmons said.

Popma also mentioned that different areas of funding will be explored to work on their projects.

“It doesn’t need to come from new funding,” Popma said.

He said enough funding is being wasted now, and money could come from that.

Allison White and Victoria Kukla

The main issue this pair is campaigning under is the Graduate Assistant Bill.

The bills states if a Michigan resident pursues an undergraduate or master’s degree at any public university in the state and completes it within eight years, the state will buy back half the tuition costs during those years.

“Hopefully, we can take the SGA down to Lansing and get this GA bill passed,” said Allison White.

The two also hope to host coffee house chats where students can come talk with them about issues.

“We would do a lot of crazy, creative things,” said Victoria Kukla.

Lauren Elias and Shane Farrell

Lauren Elias served as representative for Robinson Hall Council, has lobbied in Washington D.C. and is involved with the Academic Senate.

She runs with Shane Farrell, who has spent two years in the SGA House where he is the president pro-tempore.

“SGA has been a passive voice in the past,” Farrell said. “We want to make it an active voice. We are going to act on student’s core beliefs.”

Elias also wants to focus on student retention.

“Students being involved is a key to retention,” Elias said. “Western has a four-year plan where you can get into classes. There’s no reason we can’t have better communication.”

Jason Nichol and Brittany Mouzourakis

The two are running on a platform of six key components.

The first component of their platform is to strengthen core academic programs.

“We can improve the quality of the work force,” Brittany Mouzourakis said.

The other platforms are increasing undergraduate retention, strengthening sustainability on campus, focusing on in-state recruitment, continuing lobbying for higher education funding, and keeping tuition affordable.

“When universities such as U-of-M get two-thirds more, there is an economic disparity,” Mouzourakis said of higher education funding.

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E-mail the author: Griffin Fraley