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Monday, October 7, 2013
Meet the Candidates
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Volume 63 No. 18
SA presidential reelection commences
JOE KONZE JR
NEWS EDITOR
In recent years, the Student Association has been under scrutiny following scandals and openended promises. The most recent sequence of impropriety led to the resignation of SA President Nick Johns, who was accused of a litany of offenses, Sept. 18. Now it’s time to find Johns’ replacement. SA’s presidential reelection will take place from Monday to Wednesday. Voting will be open in the Student Union Theatre from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. On Sunday afternoon, candidates Sam McMahon, Jessica Honan and Mohammad Alwahaidy stood before The Spectrum’s editorial board to present their platforms for this week’s election. Editor’s Note: Candidates Kyle Davis, James Lopez, Amber Potter and Michael Simons chose not to attend The Spectrum’s endorsement process. See The Spectrum’s official endorsement on Page Three. Name: Sam McMahon Year: Fifth-year senior Major: Aerospace Engineer Current SA position: Senior Office Manager Extracurricular activities/relevant experience: Event staff manager of SA, handled budget and balances over the summer, helped put on freshmen orientation events One of McMahon’s biggest ideas of his platform is student involvement with the $94.75 student activity fee. He said every student “should have a chance to benefit equally.” McMahon has proposed two ideas to make sure
PHOTOS BY ALINE KOBAYASHI
SAM MCMAHON
students can get the most from that fee. The first is a holiday shuttle service that would bus students to and from the airport around the breaks at UB. “I’ve already priced it out,” McMahon said. “It’s extremely reasonable. I think it’s something that if we give enough advanced notice to, all students can benefit from it.” He also proposed the idea of an SA-subsidized taxi system for students. McMahon wants to look into a “10 percent off ” deal for cab rides under $100 through a specific cab service when a student shows his or her UB ID card. “Every undergraduate student who goes to school here has taken a cab at some point in the four years they’re here at school,” McMahon said. “I think these two things are really important points to kind of cover students who will never join a club [or] never like our Fest genre.” McMahon believes his experience separates him from his opponents. He said SA needs someone who is familiar with the organization and the current SA staff in this crucial time.
Name: Mohammad Alwahaidy Year: Senior Major: Biology Current SA position: SUNY Delegate Extracurricular activities/relevant experience: Alwahaidy has worked in SA as a SUNY Delegate for the past six months and emceed the 2013 International Fiesta His first objective is heated bus stops. He said he is aiming to install a heated bus stop around the area of O’Brien Hall. The task, which is already almost complete, would keep students warm from the cold winters of Buffalo. The bus stop in the Flint Loop would no longer be used, he said. “[Myself], Nick Johns and Jen Merckel met with Academic Provost [Charles Zukoski] who is the academic leader of the school,” Alwahaidy said. “And hopefully we can get this rolling and we should have an expected due date for the heated bus stops coming back from winter break.” Another one of his objectives is the reduction of the presidential stipend. If Alwahaidy is elected, he said he will decrease the pay to $2,000 because he believes the remaining money could be used for club activities. SA presidents receive a full-year stipend
MOHAMMAD ALWAHAIDY
of $12,000, though Johns received the summer and beginning-of-fall pay, and the incoming president will earn roughly $7,000 for his time in office. “I think if you are willing to step into a position like this, you should be able to make sacrifices,” Alwahaidy said. “We are currently, as a Student Association, not looking too bright. So, the more we put toward the [clubs], the more we can get back.” He was also adamant about establishing an ‘open door policy’ in which students can stop into the SA office, located in room 350 in the Student Union, to question leadership and decisions made by SA. He also believes that “if it shouldn’t be said in the office, it shouldn’t be said at all.” Name: Jessica Honan Year: Junior Major: Pharmacology/Toxicology Current SA Position: None Extracurricular activities/relevant experience: Honors College Student Council, work as a paralegal Honan is a brand new face to SA. She has never held a position in the organization but wants to provide a change she believes it desperately needs.
JESSICA HONAN
She said there is disconnect between SA and its clubs and her solution is to collect as much feedback as possible. She has a simple way of conducting a new form of evaluations. Every six weeks, clubs would write down on a sheet of paper how the organization is doing and what it could do better. SA would then review the feedback. “The only way to assess and make things better and to progress is to see where we are weak and where we are strong,” Honan said. Though she doesn’t have experience in SA, Honan said her experience as an active member of the Honors College Student Council makes her qualified to take on a presidency. She said she is eager to learn and will be an effective leader if elected. “Honestly, not being in an SA position right now and not being in the SA office or anything like that, some people might look at is as ‘she might not have the experience, oh, she’s not qualified.’ But I think it’s a good thing,” Honan said. Honan sees her inexperience as an asset because she believes she could provide SA with a “fresh pair of eyes.” email: news@ubspectrum.com
HEIGHTS RESIDENTS CONTINUE TO LIVE IN HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS Housing blitz continues; inspectors find homes on Englewood not up to code
SAM FERNANDO
SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
Mayura Soot is continually getting bit by bed bugs in her Englewood Avenue house in the University Heights. Because she is from India, Soot, a first-year MBA student, rented her home before even seeing it. She saw the listing on UBrents. com, a website sponsored by UB that claims “each and every of our homes and apartments include terrific locations, modern improvements, around the clock maintenance, and a ‘dream like’ living experience.” Now, two months after Soot and her three roommates, who are also from India, moved into the house, she said her room is infested with bed bugs and her landlord is difficult to reach and doesn’t take her complaints seriously. She said she wasn’t expecting UB to sponsor a house in this condition. “The house was handed over to us in a really bad situation,” Soot said. “We made a list of issues and forwarded it to the owner. I’ve been getting bed-bug bites. So many times I have been so frustrated, and I told [the landlord] that it is a health risk … I have lost all hopes of getting something done. I am not proud of this place and I am not at all
happy.” On Saturday, Director of OffCampus Student Services Dan Ryan and five city inspectors examined houses on Englewood Avenue, including Soot’s home. The housing blitz – a joint effort by Off-Campus Student Services and the City of Buffalo that aims to ensure students in the Heights are living in homes that meet city codes – was the second of the semester. “The fact is a lot of our students are living in conditions that are really unsafe,” said Ryan, who started the initiative three years ago. “We have seen too many cases where houses that hadn’t been inspected were sources of house fires and that sort of thing. And we want to make sure students are living with smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors and call students’ attention to some safety precautions that will make their stay here more productive and safe.” Upon arriving at Soot’s house, Peter Klemann, one of the city inspectors, told Soot how serious the bed-bug issue is. Soot said her brother, a New York State health practitioner, contacted her landlord to fix the problem, and the landlord told him that he didn’t know what a bed bug was. Her roommates, Swati Priya and Manjari Varshney, who
SAM FERNANDO, THE SPECTRUM
On Saturday, UB’s Off-Campus Student Services and the City of Buffalo conducted this semester’s second housing blitz – an effort that aims to ensure students in the Heights are living in homes that meet city codes. A student who lives on Englewood, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of repercussions from his landlord, said there has been a pile of garbage for the past month and his landlord has yet to get rid of it.
are also first-year MBA students, said their landlord is difficult to reach except when he is trying to collect rent. The furnace in the house hasn’t been able to operate at lower than 70 degrees. Priya and Manjari said they have been calling their landlord for two months to fix the problem,
but he has yet to repair it. Klemann examined the apartment above Soot’s first-floor home and asked the tenants if they had a bed-bug issue, too. The students said there were bed bugs, but the landlord, the same landlord for Soot, had fumigated the second floor last month.
Charlie Didio, one of the Buffalo inspectors on the blitz, said fumigating the top floor of a house and not the bottom is “useless.” If the entire home isn’t exterminated properly, the bed bugs from the first floor will return to the top floor, he said. Dan Dye, a junior electrical engineering major who lives on Englewood, agrees that some of the houses in the Heights are in dangerous conditions. But he said what differentiates the good homes from the bad ones are the landlords. Dye and his two roommates – Bryan Froimowitz, a junior business major, and Nick Palumbo, a junior civil engineering major – said their experience with their landlord, Jeff Brock, had been great thus far. Dye said Brock is easy to contact and fixes housing issues in a timely matter. He stores his tools in the students’ basement and allows the three tenants to use them as they need. Brock also installed a security system in the home. Leo Vousher, a senior business major at Buffalo State College, said his experience in the Heights this year is far better than last, which he attributes to his new landlord. SEE HOUSING BLITZ, PAGE 2