USG Presidential Debate: The Big Questions

Feb 3

By Terry Nguyen ‘20

On Feb. 1, USC Annenberg Media hosted a town hall-style debate for the Undergraduate Student Government presidential and vice presidential candidates. The three presidential tickets for this year’s election – Austin-Morgan, Million-Vorhoff and Rachel-Rebecca — feature a diverse range of candidates from all aspects of the student body, and the topics they touched upon in their limited speaking time illustrated the goals and unique personalities of each platform.

The questions were submitted by members of the undergraduate community, and topics such as tuition transparency, sexual assault prevention and diversity initiatives were raised.

Each ticket was given approximately one minute to respond, and moderator Cole Sullivan selected the order in which they would answer.

To those who did not tune into the USG presidential debate, here are a few important questions raised by members of the audience to the three presidential tickets and their responses:

What will you do to ensure transparency in university expenditures, and how will you give students a voice in deciding how tuition is spent?

Financial transparency is a key issue for most students, considering the rising costs of the institution. Austin Dunn, the presidential candidate and current USG vice president, admits that a tuition freeze is not possible, but the best way for student representatives to handle these concerns is to remain transparent.

“Transparency is something we’re working on already,” Dunn said. He and his running-mate, Morgan Monahan, emphasized on requesting the administration to release statements illustrating reasons for certain increasing expenses.

Rachel Udabe, the presidential candidate for the Rachel-Rebecca ticket, also voiced similar concerns. Their ticket wanted to emulate the online platform of transparency many cities have in outlining their expenses to ensure accessibility among students.

The Million-Vorhoff ticket further emphasized on how their campaign strives to promote financial transparency to benefit students, by properly allocating money into new cultural centers or campus facilities. “We need to talk to the administration, and we need to be clear and precise,” said Timothy Vorhoff, the vice presidential candidate.

Have you figured out how your platform could be implemented given the budgetary constraints of USG?

USG handles a $2.3 million budget, and students were curious to hear how each ticket planned to successfully deliver their campaign promises despite the budgetary constraints.

The Million-Vorhoff campaign reinstated their plan in allocating funds towards facets that would improve student life. They want to create a funding branch to encourage student involvement in extracurriculars.

“A lot of things on these platform points cost a lot of money,” Rachel Udabe said. The Rachel-Rebecca ticket wants to bring students to the forefront of any financial discussion and to communicate directly to the student body how their funds in the budget will be allocated.

Austin and Morgan, having been experienced USG members, planned on reducing part of the budget from USG itself to give back those funds to the student body. Dunn said, “The priority of our focus is removing money from USG and putting it into the students.”

Has USG made progress on the issue of sexual assault? If not, how do you plan to address this differently?

Sexual assault has been rising in the ranks of importance by school officials. Therefore, this issue has become central to the platforms of many campaigns in recent years. All the campaigns intend on implementing some form of training in student organizations and Greek life to prevent sexual assault.

Austin and Morgan, as well as Daniel and Timothy, emphasized on bystander intervention training, which is a program that engages students in being proactive in sexual assault prevention. Rebecca and Rachel also plan to implement a similar program; they mentioned requiring the presidents of every student organization, in addition to Greek life, to participate in sexual assault training.

“We need to build a culture of respect and responsibility throughout the university,” Rebecca Harbeck, the vice presidential candidate, shared.

What is one point in your platform you are most passionate about?

All political campaigns, whether they are on a national or local scale, have one thing in common: passion. This question allowed audiences to see a little bit of what drives these candidates to change the university for the better.

Daniel Million spoke about his mission in addressing and improving the issue of diversity and inclusion on campus.

Austin Dunn advocated for a message of inclusion and making students’ voices heard, and Dunn emphasized on the First Generation student program he had been so passionate about last year as the vice president.

And finally, Rachel Udabe detailed her passion for open communication between students to USG to the administration. She highlighted sexual assault prevention as one of her major goals and stated that her 9 platform points are just “starting points” to build upon in the coming term.

To learn more about each campaign, visit their websites below: