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IN FOCUS tuesday, february 6, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com
LAUREN WELDON, BEN PADANILAM and EMMA FARNAN | The Observer
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IN FOCUS
The observer | TueSday, february 6, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com
Gates McGavick — Corey Gayheart Who they are: Presidential candidate Gates McGavick is a junior from Seattle, Washington, studying English. He has been very involved in dorm life; currently, he is the president of Keough Hall, and he has previously served as the student senator for Keough. Junior Corey Gayheart is running as McGavick’s vice president. A native of Fairborn, Ohio, Gayheart has served as senator for St. Edward’s Hall, as class council representative and as a student ambassador for the department of development. He is majoring in political science.
Top priority: Improving dorm life While McGavick’s and Gayheart’s main effort to improve dorm life — repealing the three-year housing requirement — does not seem feasible, their proposed “solutions-based” plan to approach the administration includes some changes to work on “bolstering dorm life.” Their plan to tackle the housing requirement includes working
on building a waiver system in the event their attempts to appeal are unsuccessful. The waiver system has the potential to be problematic, as students may feel “other-ized” at the prospect of being fit into a box to gain the waiver, but it does show they are trying to stay realistic with their goals and preparing a backup plan. They also cited the need for repairs in many of the dorms. “There are literally buckets hanging from pipes,” McGavick said of the state of some dorms. Improving water quality and getting rid of pests, including bats and bugs, in affected dorms are also priorities to make the dorm experience more equal, McGavick said.
Best idea: Improving the blue light system on campus With the help of Campus Safety and the Notre Dame Security Police (NDSP), McGavick and Gayheart plan to evaluate the current bluelight system, an emergencycall-station system with a few locations on the outskirts of
campus, including by the lakes and near Twyckenham Drive. In addition to improving the position of and making repairs to current blue lights, the ticket also wants to look into adding more locations around campus, including in areas that are frequented more often by students.
Worst idea: Hosting student government members from other universities Working and collaborating with student leaders from other colleges could be a very fruitful idea, but hosting those students on campus and planning tailgates for them hardly seems to be the most productive use of student government resources, especially for a ticket that claims to prioritize “making student government more fiscally responsible” in their platform.
Most feasible: Reforming senate McGavick and Gayheart brought up several potential changes for student senate: moving the meetings to
Monday nights to streamline the flow of information for Tuesday hall council meetings; allotting time for public comments at the end of senate meetings; increasing the training for incoming senators; and ending closed senate meetings. These goals are all extremely feasible. Not all will reap the same amount of benefits, but some — especially ending closed senate meetings and better preparing senators for their positions — could have a big impact on how senate functions as representatives for the student body.
Least feasible: Repeal three-year housing requirement The three-year housing requirement has already been passed for approval by the Board of Trustees; vice president of student affairs Erin Hoffmann Harding has announced the University is in the midst of seeking funding for two new residence halls in preparation for this requirement, which starts for the class of 2022. McGavick and Gayheart have said they would
take a “solutions-based” approach, but with the plan already so far in the works, it seems extremely unlikely the administration will backtrack on such an enormous decision.
Bottom Line: A different kind of experience, transparency and realistic goals Having both served as hall senators — and McGavick currently serving as a hall president — the McGavickGayheart ticket brings a slightly different kind of leadership experience than most student government tickets in the past. They said their experience requires a more day-to-day kind of accountability, which is underlined by their advocacy for more transparency in student government, including ending closed senate meetings. While some of their ideas — specifically repealing the new housing requirement and standardizing the Moreau experience — seem lofty and impractical, most of their platform is extremely realistic, which would increase their potential impact on student life.
Andrew Gannon — Mark Moran Who they are: Although the student body has not had a Zahm ticket since 2014, the once “perennial” comedic duo is back, this time represented by freshmen Andrew Gannon and Mark Moran. Gannon, an economics major from Madison, New Jersey, is running for the position of student body president. Moran, an accounting major from Wheaton, Illinois, is running for the position of student body vice president.
Top Priority: Making Notre Dame a two-ply toilet paper campus Both Gannon and Moran emphasized the importance of community at Notre Dame — going as far as to insist that all dorms be renamed “House” because “a house is where you live, and a hall is where you walk” — but they then settled on solving what they believe to be the most pressing issue on campus: the lack of twoply toilet paper. The ticket has relied upon a crowd-sourcing campaign through Google Forms to understand the needs of students, and it has received submissions demanding the transition to two-ply toilet paper “probably 15 times,” leaving the ticket hopeful it can
enact such a change by adding it to the Student Union Constitution. “It’s more of a basic right than a privilege,” Moran said. “So we want to make that happen.”
Best Idea: Use of Google Forms to communicate with students Moran noted that the campaign has received many responses about the needs of the student body during its campaign from students through its use of Google Forms. Thus, the ticket believes the application can serve a valuable purpose in helping it to listen to the ideas of students and help bring those ideas to fruition. Gannon said the ticket also wants to create avenues of communication with the administration, suggesting that this goal could be accomplished if the administration were to “just give them access to the Google Form.” But why Google Forms? “Google is at some point probably going to run our country,” Moran said. “The United States of Google is a real possibility — it’s not really a possibility so much as a likelihood — and so we just wanted to get in on the ground floor.”
Worst Idea: Expanding the recent mandate to Notre
Dame’s housing policy Gannon cited the administration’s recent mandate to require students to live on campus for six semesters and said, “Why not force students to commit and spend their senior year of high school on campus” to express a dedication to the Notre Dame experience. If that idea were to be shut down, the ticket would then alternatively propose mandating students to live all four years on campus. In this alternative proposal, seniors would float for a double and allow the administration to arrange their marriage so they could have a ring by spring semester of their senior year. “That is something that’s very important to us,” Gannon said. “It kind of gives students a chance to get a taste of marriage before you leave campus and kind of prepare them for the real world.”
Most Feasible: Small changes to the dining hall experience One suggestion the campaign received through its Google Forms campaign was pushing for the correct labeling of ice-cream flavors in the dining halls, which Moran considers a priority. “I went for cookies and cream, and I got peanut butter cup,” he said. “If
I had been allergic to peanut butter? Deathly.” The ticket also plans to revitalize a campaign promise from last year and bring wet wipes to the dining halls. The only other feasible idea for the ticket was one of a personal nature. While on the campaign trail, Moran also noted that campaign manager and Zahm senior JP Bruno was in desperate need of new shoes, and so he told The Observer in the ticket’s interview Saturday that providing this resource to Bruno would be a new initiative for him and Gannon, stating, “we do want to make that happen.”
Least Feasible: Building another Campus Crossroads Both Gannon and Moran have dedicated themselves to fighting for another Campus Crossroads for the students to enjoy. One structure the ticket hopes is included in this Campus Crossroads is a ChickFil-A, which Gannon said is “pretty much in everyone’s platform nowadays.” “It might just be a Chick-fil-A,” Gannon said of his and Moran’s vision for the facility. “It could just be a giant, giant Chick-Fil-A.” Gannon also said the ticket could make a separate Google
Form for ideas for the new project. However, the ticket said it has yet to decide if it will pursue this project or push for a second library directly on top of Hesburgh Library so as to make it twice as hard to complete the Hesburgh Challenge, which Gannon defined as the challenge of students to “read a book on every floor of the library.”
Bottom Line: Satirizing the process Gannon and Moran have embraced their role as the comical Zahm ticket in the election. While their ideas may appear outlandish at first, they stated on multiple occasions during their interview with The Observer on Saturday that they believe everything they are suggesting is just as feasible as everything that every other candidate is suggesting. Moran said he and Gannon believe that “in kind of a twisted way, [they are] representing reality, if you bend logic a little.” Bruno was quick to point out that the Zahm ticket is the only ticket not to have an allegation filed against them, with Moran citing this as evidence of the campaign’s ideas being “wholesome in [their] intentions” despite their outlandish appearance.
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In Focus
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Alex Kruszewski — Julia Dunbar Who they are:
student tuition
Running for president on the ticket is junior Alex Kruszewski, a junior from Erie, Pennsylvania, majoring in finance and peace studies and living in Dillon Hall. Kruszewski has previously served in student government under the Blais-Shewit administration as Executive Controller, where he worked with administrators on financial matters, including tuition and club funding. Junior Julia Dunbar joins Kruszewski on the ticket, running as vice president. Dunbar, a Fairfax, Virginia, native and resident of Howard Hall, is majoring in neuroscience and behavior. Throughout her time at Notre Dame, Dunbar has been engaged in various projects at Notre Dame aimed at improving mental health on campus, serving as the director of the department of health and wellness in student government during her sophomore year.
The centerpiece of the Kruszewski-Dunbar agenda is decreasing student tuition, a project Kruszewski has been working on for the past year, developing a plan administrators had supported in the past, he said in an interview with The Observer on Saturday. Kruszewski — who cited similar models at European universities such as Oxford and Cambridge — claimed tuition could be cut in half in the next 15 years by creating endowments for yearly expenses which are currently included in tuition. If they assumed office, Kurszewski said he and Dunbar would set this plan into motion by launching a fundraising campaign among alumni.
Top priority: Putting a plan in place to decrease
Best idea: Creating a multicultural student center In an attempt to fill empty spaces left by many campus partners moving to the Duncan Student Center, Kruszewski and Dunbar have proposed filling these empty spaces with a multicultural student center,
which will help bring together underrepresented student groups and connect them with resources and faculty mentors. Dunbar said this center would create something good out of now-abandoned spaces.
Worst idea: Bringing a Chick-fil-A to Eddy Street One of the eight centerpieces of the Kruszewski and Dunbar campaign is bringing a Chickfil-A restaurant to Eddy Street with continued development south of campus. While there are certainly students who would be in favor of this plan, there are no signs that administration and developers would consider this idea after ignoring student input on the idea for the Duncan Student Center, a development project which student government actually did have the opportunity to influence. Focusing on this project would likely divert time and resources away from issues which could directly benefit students on campus.
Most feasible: Completion
of implementation
Callisto
The ticket’s plan to deal with deal with sexual assault and reporting consists of several steps. Kruszewski and Dunbar proposed completing implementation of Callisto, a new software for reporting assaults and an initiative the BlaisShewit administration has been making progress on for a year. Additionally, the ticket proposes a plan to establish a definition of consent in DuLac, where it does not currently exist. Dunbar said creating this definition would lead to easier and better-defined resolutions of cases of sexual assault reported to the University.
Least feasible: Repeal three-year housing requirement While there are certainly feasibility problems with the ticket’s plan to decrease tuition — primarily that it in part relies upon donations in the beginning and requires complete administrative cooperation — there is less of a
chance the University repeals the three-year housing requirement, as it has already passed approval of the Board of Trustees. Kruszewski and Dunbar proposed opening up a dialogue with administration on the issue, a strategy which is unlikely to change policy.
Bottom Line: Experience and big, hard-to-achieve goals The key skill Kruszewski and Dunbar bring to the table is experience working in student government, whether it be Kruszewski’s financial experience or Dunbar’s background in mental health causes. This experience would help the ticket achieve many of its more reasonable goals, like the creation of a multicultural student center. That being said, many of the ticket’s bigger ideas — decreasing tuition and repealing the three-year housing requirement — seem hard to accomplish without complete administrative cooperation, which is by no means a guarantee.
Candidates discuss issues, initiatives in debate By NATALIE WEBER Associate News Editor
After an election season marked by allegations of campaign misconduct, student body presidential candidates sparred over issues such as student government transparency and the originality of their platforms in a debate in Duncan Student Center on Monday. This year’s candidates and their respective running mates include freshmen Andrew Gannon and Mark Moran, juniors Alex Kruszewski and Julia Dunbarand juniors Gates McGavick and Corey Gayheart. Kruszewski said the McGavick-Gayheart platform — divided into the three categories “approachable, collaborative and transformative” (ACT) — contained several initiatives which had already been completed. In particular, Kruszewski said the ticket’s plans to implement GreeNDot at bars, facilitate exemptions from the six-semester housing policy with a waiver program and create an SAO-based “student leader directory” had already been done. “Do you vote for student body president and vice president because you want to get GreeNDot training in bars on campus?” he said. “If that’s the case, that was done three years ago. … Do you vote for student body president because of waiver implementation on housing policy? If that’s the case, that’s done this year. If you want an SAO list of clubs on campus, that’s done. It’s called SAO 360.” The Kruszewski-Dunbar ticket centers on eight platform points,
including plans to decrease tuition, adjust the definition of consent at Notre Dame and double club funding. Kruszewski said he and Dunbar planned to carry out initiatives which had never been undertaken before. “The reason you vote for student body president or vice president is to tackle the big ideas out there,” he said. “We can do tangible things in the departments that we’re going to empower, but we want to make pushes to start conversations that are constantly in the back of your heads.” Kruszewski said he and Dunbar have the experience and relationships with administration needed to enact large-scale change. McGavick said he disagreed that this student government experience was needed to be successful. “If we start deciding that the litmus test for being student body president is how many administration people you know and the amount of clout on the second floor of LaFun that you have, we’re going to shut out pretty much every student on this campus,” he said. “And that is just a destructive idea. That’s not the point of representative democracy.” Past student government administrations, McGavick said, have been similarly shut off from the concerns of those outside student government. “I think, frankly, we’ve seen that a bit in the past couple years with presidencies being handed down from president to vice president to cabinet secretary, and I think we need an outside voice,” he said. “I think we need people that understand that we
have to represent a lot of people on campus who don’t necessarily know every working of student government but have a sense of what kids on campus really care about.” Moran said he and Gannon — the first Zahm ticket since 2014 — took student feedback into consideration when formulating their platform. The two created a crowd-sourced platform, including items such as a proposed monorail to Saint Mary’s, another Campus Crossroads and twoply toilet paper. “I think one of the best ideas was to have two-ply toilet paper in all bathrooms on campus,” he said. “That is a very large improvement we can make to our campus as a whole. We were talking with our campaign manager about how so much of the physical and emotional pain that students bring to him is because they’ve had to use single-ply toilet paper.” All three candidates said they opposed the new housing policy, which requires students to live on campus for six semesters. Both the McGavick-Gayheart and the Kruszewski-Dunbar tickets said they hoped to overturn the housing policy. McGavick said in addition to implementing GreeNDot in South Bend bars and supporting the Stand4IX movement, he and Gayheart also planned to purse a “parietals amnesty campaign.” This would allow students to leave dangerous situations — despite breaking parietals — without getting in trouble. “If a student feels they are unsafe in a dorm after parietals, they should have the full
flexibility and comfort of being able to leave that dangerous situation without any consequences from the dorm staff or rector,” he said. “We believe that that is a major student safety issue because if somebody feels they’re going to get in trouble for escaping a dangerous situation, that’s a major problem.” Dunbar said this policy had already been implemented. She said she and Kruszewski planned to adjust the definition of consent in DuLac and also support the Stand4IX campaign as part of their sexual assault prevention initiatives. “We’d also like to talk about how DuLac does not have a definition for consent,” she said. “That hurts women and men, and that is not okay. This is a policy shift that we could realistically achieve, and we think it’s necessary and will protect our community and would also help survivors in their cases and trials, going through the process.” While Gannon and Moran often answered questions with jokes, they said they wanted to address the question of sexual assault seriously. “One of our ideas was making it a mandatory requirement for all hall staff to be GreeNDot certified, and while we are not active participants in any high-up roles in any sexual assault groups on campus, we definitely would bring in the right people to bring in the wisdom and experience needed to do a good job with this if we were elected,” Moran said. Kruszewski said another of his and Dunbar’s main focuses if elected would be to increase funding for clubs. He said 38
percent of the funds from student activities fees, a portion of the endowment and funds from The Shirt go to clubs. He said he plans to decrease funding for student government to increase funding for clubs. “We would flip the percentage and give student clubs 62 percent of the funding, take a pay cut, a budget cut, for the two of us,” he said. “So take money away from the president and vice president and give it back to students through the CCC, and that way in the first week this would be implemented, we would pass it through student senate, and then the change would be in place for this upcoming fall.” Gayheart said he and McGavick hoped to increase student government transparency if elected. “There have been four closed Senate meetings this year,” he said. “Literally, newspaper was up over the windows. That is a problem. That literally exemplifies not being transparent. So the first step, again, no closed senate meetings.” Kruszewski said he and Dunbar hope to turn student feedback into concrete changes. “The fact of the matter is there’s not a power right now that allows the student voices to actually turn into tangible, real action,” he said. “So we provide what I think is the biggest challenge for this role is changing those voices into tangible action. You need clout to do that. You need experience. You need understanding of how to work with administrators.” Contact Natalie Weber at nweber@nd.edu
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The observer | TueSday, February 6, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com
IN FOCUS
The Observer endorses McGavick-Gayheart The Notre Dame student body will be faced with a difficult decision between three student government tickets when polls open Wednesday — juniors Gates McGavick and Corey Gayheart; freshmen Andrew Gannon and Mark Moran; and juniors Alex Kruszewski and Julia Dunbar. Each campaign presented platforms that address many concerns and needs of the student body. The Observer Editorial Board interviewed all three tickets over the weekend and, having considered the priorities and plans of each ticket, voted to endorse McGavick-Gayheart. McGavick and Gayheart, along with junior campaign manager Mary Ninneman, have a diverse array of both experience in student government and political ideologies between them, representing students from groups all across campus. Furthermore, the ticket developed a solutionsbased platform that contains feasible plans for issues that are important to many students on campus, even acknowledging that they may need to settle for compromises on some of their more unattainable priorities — such as working with the University administration to repeal the six-semester housing requirement. During the ticket’s interview with The Observer, Gayheart said their strateg y for this places an emphasis on fixing the “little issues that are affecting dorm life” in order to enhance the quality of residence halls across campus. Additionally, McGavick and Gayheart plan on working with campus safety to map existing blue lights on campus, assess the condition of each one and make them more easily accessible to students by both improving their visibility and adding more. W hile simple, this is a concrete step toward increasing the safety of Notre Dame’s campus, particularly as the ticket intends to use a map of crime at the University to determine where the lights are most necessary. Some of McGavick and Gayheart’s solutions, however, pose their own problems. The Kruszewski-Dunbar ticket said they believe they have the data to show that a waiver system within the six-semester housing requirement would do more harm than good, as students who qualif y for the system would need to reveal personal information about themselves and then be subjected to questions about “which box” they check off. The concerns Kruszewski and Dunbar raised about
LAUREN WELDON | The Observer
the system warrant reconsideration of waivers as a possible solution to problems Notre Dame students may encounter within the six-semester requirement. These solutions, however, are what appear to be missing from the Kruszewski-Dunbar platform, which contains several items that seem unattainable — such as decreasing tuition and bringing a Chick-fil-A restaurant to Eddy Street. W hile both the Kruszewski-Dunbar and McGavick-Gayheart campaigns have made addressing the six-semester requirement a priority, Kruszewski and Dunbar are largely relying on using their connections within the administration as a solution, and their platform is devoid of concrete steps to improve life on campus for Notre Dame students if those connections are not enough. W hen asked what steps the candidates plan on taking to repeal the housing requirement or create solutions within the requirement, Kruszewski pointed to the section of the ticket’s website that lists repealing the mandate as a priority. This section, however, does not propose any real plans or solutions — it simply promises the candidates will “work collaboratively through [their] administrative contacts to repeal the mandate.” This reliance on “clout with administrators,” as Kruszewski put it, is a recurring theme throughout the ticket’s platform. For instance, one of the most talked-about items on the campaign’s platform — decreasing tuition — depends almost entirely on the receptiveness of administrators, trustees and donors to a plan that we are still not convinced is feasible. Though Kruszewski claimed there are enough expenses that can be paid for through endowments rather than tuition fees, the likelihood that enough donors will endow enough of these small expenses — such as Grotto candles — to actually halve tuition fees over the course of 15 years is extremely low. Even should the University administration find donors for these types of expenses, it remains to be seen whether or not students would truly see all the savings trickle down to them in the form of reduced tuition costs, especially to the extent the ticket is promising. Additionally, it is troubling to us that a major increase in club funding Kruszewski claimed could easily be put into motion at one student senate meeting has not happened while he has served as executive controller for student government this year. Finally, while many students would welcome the addition of a new and popular eatery on Eddy Street, the construction of a Chick-fil-A during
the expansion of Eddy Street is yet another promise the candidates claim is possible due to the relationships they have formed with administrators. But in reality, student government has little to no power in the development of the South Bend community outside of Notre Dame. Still, Kruszewski and Dunbar demonstrate a commitment to improving mental health awareness and resources on campus that McGavick and Gayheart cannot match, largely thanks to Dunbar’s experience as the director of the department of health and wellness during her sophomore year. Her passion for and knowledge on the subject give the ticket a distinct advantage over the McGavick-Gayheart ticket on this point. Additionally, the ticket’s idea to find space for a new Multicultural Student Center somewhere on campus — especially as various departments are moved around due to the recent completion of the Campus Crossroads project — is a feasible goal that could benefit many of the most marginalized communities on campus. As for the Gannon-Moran ticket, while we appreciate the levity the two freshmen bring to the student government election, it is clear that the campaign is intended for comedic purposes only, and neither Gannon nor Moran would like to serve as student body president and vice president. McGavick and Gayheart’s priorities are studentfocused initiatives, such as working to solve the root of students’ problems with dorm life at Notre Dame and improving campus safety by completing an overhaul of the University’s blue light system. These are not only attainable, but also would make several strides toward addressing two major issues on campus. Kruszewski and Dunbar, however, seem to believe that connections within the administration and a year of experience with student government’s finances will allow them to achieve the lofty goals of lowering tuition and repealing the housing requirement entirely rather than proposing any tangible compromises to address their issues with the requirement or a possible waiver system. W hile strong relationships with administrators can certainly be beneficial, even past administrations with these established relationships have come to recognize that some things are beyond student government’s reach. McGavick and Gayheart, while potentially aiming too high with platform goals such as repealing the new housing policy, have largely set their sights on attainable improvements to student life at Notre Dame.