OUSC 2023 presidential debate overview

JOE ZERILLI Campus Editor

Presidential slates met one last time before voting as vice presidential and presidential candidates debated against each other for election to Oakland University’s Student Congress (OUSC) office. Moderated by Jeremy Johnson, candidates were asked questions on topics like tuition, campus safety, food on campus and the relationship with administration.

The debate included Murryum Farooqi of the Farooqi-Ferguson slate, Josef Gojcaj of the Gojcaj-Mitchell slate and Joshua Kobus of the Kobus slate. Below are their initial responses to the general questions asked.

General experience

Gojcaj: “I think my experience started at a young age growing up in an immigrant, working class household. I’ve gone through a lot of things in life, from drug addiction to mental health illness that resulted in the police coming to my home.

“But following that, I think my parents raised me pretty well. I think having that experience of being a hard worker and helping people in a humanitarian way is why I’m here today. Also, I serve as the current director of outreach and events for OUSC. I came into the position very quickly after being nominated.”

Farooqi: “My experience in Student Congress has been, honestly, such an amazing experience. I have been a part of so many huge initiatives, so many huge wins for the students.

“We donated thousands of dollars to the affordable course material initiative, where students are saving upwards of $60,000 unaffordable textbooks. We ended the East Campus Development program, and we diverted those funds back to students. We fought for free menstrual products in every single building on campus, and I’m going to continue to fight for more of those.

“My track record speaks for itself. I started the pronoun pin program — we distributed thousands of pronouns across all of campus. That hasn’t even been a thing before I got here.”

Kobus: “I grew up in a family of seven. I’m the older brother, and then throughout my life, I’ve had more opportunities to display leadership, like becoming a resident assistant in the halls.

“Now, when it comes to my experience at the Student Congress, well, I have none. I am running just purely as a student who has been involved in some clubs, and I’ve heard their problems and their cries and struggles in terms of their involvement with Oakland.

“As the past two years have gone by, I’ve seen that OU Student Congress has kind of hidden themselves from the general population. So I’m coming here from the outside because I know there’s no biases, no conflict of interest issues or student politics that will prevent me from getting done what needs to be done.”

Groups to work with Gojcaj: “Definitely think it’s hard to respond to selecting certain groups of people and certain populations on campus, but some groups of people that I feel compassion for are first generation students, the LGBTQ+ community, anyone who is associated with Greek life in the Greek community, housing residents and anyone who is an athlete.”

Farooqi: “I’ll say this. I’ve made a lot of different connections over my time in Student Congress, and I think every single student is important. I care about every single student, no matter who you are, no matter what your political beliefs are, religion. I’m going to work with you separately.

“We actually already have a faculty rep, we have a liaison, club sports, we actually helped them get more funding. They came to us. We talked to them last year. You can double check it. You can ask ballroom and dance.

“We have grad students in Student Congress and the representatives that you’re talking about in gen body, we contact them every single week and they don’t give us any information, they don’t show up.”

Kobus: “I have many great ideas about who needs to be represented in Congress that is currently not getting representation they need. For example: representative from Greek life, representative from student athletics, club sports who have been struggling getting money.

“I believe our graduate students have also been forgotten — graduate student representative, and then a student representative as a commuter, and then one organization who has definitely been rejected is the residents’ life associate from housing. They have not been going to any meetings, and I think faculty goes into that, as well.

“I think it’d be great to have a faculty representative, and by having all these representatives at our meetings — and actually meeting at a good time, not Fridays at 4:30 that no one shows up to — I think I could get more people to come, have more representation and I could finally get an idea of what everyone on campus wants.”

Food on campus

Gojcaj: “I think we can all agree that we have some of the same experiences when it comes to food and dining here on campus. It’s pretty disappointing to see the quality of the food here on campus. I think one of the biggest things we need to do is improve on the quality, because from what I’ve known from Chartwells, they buy low cost stock.

“They have a low amount of workers conducting the preparing of the food, as well as charging higher prices for the food even though they are lower cost. So I think one of the biggest things we need to do is improve the quality, lower the expenses, expand dining hall hours and continue to talk to the Chartwells.”

Farooqi: “As a freshman, one of my biggest things was having inclusive options, because that’s something that’s affected me personally, having strict dietary requirements. And so I know as a student, every student deals with and interacts with oncampus dining, and every student deserves food at a decent price and of decent quality.

“We’ve fought to expand dining hall hours in the dining halls that are open, we’ve fought to have inclusive food options, to have labeling for allergies and whatever it may be.

“And most importantly, the thing I’m most excited about that we’ve worked on is a program called Swipe Out Hunger, where we’ve worked to allow people to donate their unused meal swipes to students in need.”

Kobus: “I’ll say for sure that the dining halls aren’t perfect and they do struggle with a lot of issues. Now, I think I’ve learned from the current administration how not to deal with that. And I’m referring to OU Starves.

“OU Starves is honestly immature and honestly very cowardly — it’s basically bullying Chartwells by showing pictures of gross food.

“Now, the way that it’s supposed to go is, last year I was the resident assistant liaison to RLA. There, they have a Chartwells rep, and you could pair up all the concerns.

“You could say, ‘Hey, this food was really good that we had today.’ And you could also bring up more things to dining halls like, ‘We would prefer more fruits and veggies, for example. We prefer more options.’ Anyone could join these meetings, if everyone just went there and voiced those concerns.”

Meal swipes

Gojcaj: “I don’t think Swipe Out Hunger is doing enough, because there are a lot of people on this campus who are students who face lower income issues, financial issues, and I think lowering the cost of the food and telling Chartwells to lower the cost even though they’re buying low cost product.”

Farooqi: “I can say Swipe Out Hunger is something we’ve been pushing for the administration or for Chartwells since 2021, since last year when we talked to the food pantry, they told us about this idea. We got them to do it for one week, and over 300 swipes were donated, because they kept telling us no one wanted to donate.

“I think it needs to be something that’s allowed to happen year round. You should always be able to donate swipes, because you paid for them.

“And, both my opponents here are also kind of giving similar sentiments, but I’m the only one here that actually has a track record of getting Chartwells to do things. So at the end of the day, it’s a matter of who has the track record, who has the proof of ‘I’ve been able to do this in the past.’”

Kobus: “I think it’s a good addition, because now, as someone who eats at Vandy every day, we have a limited number of guest wipes and we can bring anyone non-OU student related or people on campus.

“I know the previous director of Chartwells was an advocate of expanding that in terms of having unlimited number of guest wipes, but you could literally swipe your card as many times for whoever you want until your meal swipes go to zero. And honestly, I think being able to be more flexible with the swipes is a very good idea. I think it helps a lot.”

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