ASI presidential candidates talk tactics

Associated Students Inc. candidates running in the 2009-2010 election participated in a moderated dialogue in front of a small crowd at the Southwest Terrace on Thursday afternoon.

The candidates for president, vice president and treasurer took part in the ASI Executive Dialogue, moderated by the KBeach General Manager, John Trapper.

The online election began Sunday and will end Wednesday. Students began receiving e-mails with links to the voting site on Sunday night.

The debate among the presidential candidates — Christopher Chavez, Raul Preciado, Avis Atkins and Ricardo Linarez — was generally even-tempered until near the end.

Trapper asked the candidates what role they would like the seven Cal State Long Beach college councils — arts, business administration, natural sciences and mathematics, health and human services, education, liberal arts and engineering — to fulfill in student government.

Atkins said she wanted to create a council in which representatives from all seven councils would meet. Atkins said the meetings would be peer-mentoring sessions, rather than a round-table meeting.

Preciado believed this would create a de facto second chamber separate from the ASI Senate, which would be unnecessary.

But Chavez was more concerned about whether or not ASI had the money to meet with all the colleges.

“Considering all the financial problems that ASI is dealing with, where would you find the money? What program would you want to cut to fund this?” Chavez said.

Atkins then talked about possibly using extra money in other college council accounts.

“I know that, maybe Health and Human Services had a little over $8,000 or so to save,” Atkins said. “So these things are out there. If different colleges host them and take it on their part and do what they can to network with each other, then we don’t have to spend thousands of dollars for anything.”

Chavez rebutted, saying that the college councils couldn’t fund the meeting if it was part of ASI. The money would have to come from ASI funding. He also said that if she wanted to do peer mentoring, she would have to get people dedicated to it.

“ASI doesn’t have that much money to play with, and I’m more concerned about seeing us invest in the college councils themselves directly, invest in the student organizations, invest in the University Student Union, than really just throwing money here and there,” Chavez said.

Atkins was adamant that these meetings would be essentially free to have, and jokingly said all that would really be necessary would be to provide snacks.

Chavez said he would make sure that at least one CSULB student trustee would sit at the CSU board of trustees meetings.

“These are unprecedented times. These are something that very few, if any of our predecessors would have had fixed,” Chavez said. “And honestly we need to know that our student leaders have the ability to defend these students when these cuts come along. I know I have that ability.”

Preciado, a Students for Students Party candidate, said he would consider cutting classes to increase the school’s budget. Linarez objected, saying that cutting classes would not benefit the students.

“I believe last summer we cut classes for the general education and I believe this time they’re cutting classes for upper-division,” Linarez said. “I think that would be the last thing I would do right now.”

Trapper also asked the ASI treasurer candidates — Piero Sandoval, Marilei Denila and James Kuang — how they would address raising the currently $44 ASI fee more than $17 per semester. The fee has not increased since 1991.

Piero said that ASI could probably make “an augmentation” of the fee and cut other expenses. However, James Kuang and Marilei Denila said that they would ask the students before they raised the ASI fee.

“It’s been almost 20 years since we’ve had an ASI fee increase,” Denila said. “We should at least ask the students how they feel if we did a small fee increase to that, because ASI [has functioned] off of that $17.”

In order to raise money for ASI, Piero Sandoval said he wanted ASI to fundraise and make student organizations participate in fundraising events to contribute to a support fund between organizations.

Trapper also asked the vice presidential candidates — Zo Farooqui, Matt Barnett and Omar Gonzalez — how they would use their position on the 49er Shops Inc.’s board of directors to address the issue of textbook affordability.

Farooqui said he would lobby for lower textbook prices and try to increase the number of textbooks available at the student library. Barnett said he would inform students about other sources of financial aid, such as textbook scholarships.

Gonzalez said the senate has been working on a resolution in support of Califronia State Senate bill 386, which he said would allow teachers to do a cross-benefit analysis to find the cheapest book.

“We’ve got to protect students’ rights and increase their resources,” Gonzalez said. “The most important thing in being on the board is being the voice of the students.”

Beach News interviewed the ASI presidential candidates last week. Watch the video here.