Associated Students Inc. executive candidates picked and probed each other’s leadership skills and contributions during the third annual ASI Executive Candidates Debate on Monday in the University Student Union Ballrooms.
The debate was moderated by the Daily 49er and featured candidates for the ASI treasurer, vice presidential and presidential positions.
ASI candidates for treasurer included Agatha Gucyski and Andrew Carnes. Gucyski said if elected, she would cut 15 percent of her own salary as well as that of the vice president and president. Carnes said he would also be willing to take a pay cut for the benefit of the students.
Gucyski said that as a finance major, she would also know how to be a chief financial officer for ASI, which runs on a multi-million dollar budget. Carnes said that while he is not a finance major, his work with companies outside ASI would give him a fresh perspective.
Candidates for vice president included incumbent Jonathon Bolin, Deshe Gully, Vincent Holguin, Manuel Nieto and Larry Toney.
All five vice presidential candidates engaged with each other in heated debates over shuttles, an hour-long campus-wide break and their individual accomplishments and shortcomings.
As part of their campaign, presidential incumbent John Haberstroh and his running mate, Bolin, said that they would push for ASI to buy the campus shuttles from CSULB. Bolin said that the shuttles were in danger of not coming back next year, but Gully said that ASI buying the shuttles was not the right approach.
“We did have more shuttles last year, and we need to continue the fight on getting those back for next year,” Gully said. “ASI has a $15 million budget made up of student fees so that would mean that the students would, in fact, be paying for those shuttles, and I don’t think that’s the route to go.”
Also during the vice presidential debate, Nieto shot down Toney’s plan for an hour-long campus-wide “Beach Break” twice a week, during which all campus organizations would have time to meet.
“I just think that that plan is ignorant,” Nieto said. “We’re here to go to class, and you’re going to schedule an hour of no classes. We can’t even get the classes that we want, and you want to take an hour break to move classes? People should get involved. I totally believe that, but we’re here to get the grades; student involvement is second.”
Gully said that the Beach Break sounded great in theory, but he doubted that Toney would be able to work out the scheduling logistics with all the different colleges.
The presidential candidates included Haberstroh, Jorge Soriano and Sean Zent. Soriano currently serves as Haberstroh’s chief of staff, and the presidential debate got very personal, very quickly.
Haberstroh said Soriano was “domineering” and that he tried to take too much control in ASI’s efforts to reform its bylaws, while Soriano said that most of Haberstroh and Bolin’s efforts were focused on the two of them and not all of ASI.
“Let’s not forget who hired you, Jorge,” Haberstroh said.
Zent said that perhaps ASI’s internal conflicts were causing the organization to be less productive.
“I think that if you can’t effectively get along as ASI, that may be why you’re unable to change things for the students,” Zent said.
Students who attend the debate said that candidates got a bit off track.
“It was a little funny because I’ve been in ASI for three years,” senior psychology major RoseAnn Knight said. “It was blown out of proportion a little bit. I feel like it did become the whole ‘who’s the better man’ for the position. It could have been a healthy challenge.”
Senior psychology major Theresa Nguyen said she enjoyed the debate, but it seemed like ASI had a lot of problems.
“I really enjoyed it; it is more intense than previous years,” Nguyen said. “I thought there were more internal problems within ASI. I felt that the crowd really reacted to the comments. I feel that if it were more widespread, students would really enjoy it.”
