By Victoria Keraj
On March 19, Brooklyn College’s Undergraduate Student Government (USG) held a presidential debate in the student center. The two presidential candidates included Cyle Paul and Damir Shavkatov, and their respective vice presidents, Fia Sanchez and Carmine Tepedino.
The debate was moderated by The Vanguard.
The parties first introduced themselves and their experiences in being involved on the BC campus.
Shavkatov, Paul, and Tepedino served as student senators in the USG with Tepedino also acting as student advocate. Sanchez is the president of the LGBT Alliance on campus and vice president of the Black Solidarity Day Committee. Throughout the debate, Shavkatov also spoke on his experience as a BC navigator.
Each party had 5 minutes to provide insight on questions submitted to by BC students. The questions covered topics of concern to students which the candidates expressed their stances on and plans to address.
The first matter addressed was increasing student involvement on campus. Both candidates had plans of increasing USG’s reach to promote events and clubs. When addressing student involvement, the candidates expressed concern that since BC is a commuter school, it would take extra work to make sure that students are aware of events happening on campus.
“Something has to be shown really directly to students,” Tepidino stated. “BC Students are very hard to reach,” he later said.
Sanchez brought up that she was concerned with additional factors that would keep BC students from engaging with opportunities on campus.
“A lot of people are disconnected, because they feel so stressed out about their lives.” She added that USG’s would need to increase its reach with more forms, flyers, and information to reach those students. “We should go to classrooms on a regular basis to talk to people. I think we should put out way more forms, surveys, more flyers. We could do weekly flyering in front of the gates,” she said.
The idea of USG hosting town halls where students could present issues was brought forward in the debate by Shavkatov. Paul also shared the same sentiment, adding that town halls would be held twice every semester.
Related to the topic of student engagement are the candidates’ stances on funding for student resources. Both candidates agreed that they wished for Referendums B and C to have been passed. Referendums B and C each proposed to increase the Student Activity Fee, included as part of each student’s tuition, to fund the Athletics Department and student center improvements, respectively. B and C, along with all other proposed referendums on the ballot, were not passed. To both groups, the loss of funding for the student center and athletics resources are losses for student engagement which both parties say they are concerned with.
“It’s tough when you want to balance affordability and also engaging student life and having an
engaging campus,” Tepedino stated.
Shavkatov said that even with the referendum not getting passed, he and Tepedino still are, “[…] willing to work with the athletics as well as the student center to make some changes happen.”
“Ultimately it is up to the Brooklyn College body. We’re willing to work with anything- anything that we have and unfortunately, it didn’t get passed, but our vision was referendum B and C,” Shavkatov said on the matter.
Regarding funding, Paul said he found it disheartening that Referendum B was not passed and mentioned that the student center is currently in a $200,000 deficit.
“If we lose [the student center], we lose a large part of our student engagement and we don’t want that,” Paul stated. Paul said that despite the deficit they should still try to foster a sense of community. “We need to tap into our alumni and have a celebratory dinner […] and just make sure that we have an engagement opportunity to create a community and build on top of that. […] we have to think and move forward.”
Sanchez echoed this sense of community, but through transparency regarding some elements of the school.
“I believe that students should be involved heavily in the administration process, and money, and what goes on in school,” Sanchez stated. “If we were to be elected, our role would be to create more accessibility to those things for students.”
Regarding plans for opening up the cafeteria, Paul and Sanchez spoke on the necessity of having food on campus and how USG could achieve this goal through collaborating with people on campus like Marcus Richardson, director of Strategic Initiatives, and Alan Gilbert, president of Finance and Administration.
“It’s a matter of being approachable and being with people who can actually make this happen, Marcus Richardson, Alan Gilbert, these are people that really want to do good and that’s why we need to […] make sure that we have the opportunity to sit down and actually voice our concerns,” Paul stated.
They also spoke about Albany trips where individuals spend the day advocating for BC to receive more funding for the cafeteria.
“We should go to Albany and talk to our representatives and say we deserve more, because we do,” Sanchez said.
While Shavkatov and Tepedino expressed past efforts to revive the cafeteria and intentions for future plans, including to renovate the space, they emphasized the temporary solutions in place that they also found important to have for students, including the food pantry, food vouchers which they say they are working on renewing, food trucks, and free food offered at clubs.
“While we still will be working on the cafeteria, we do also want to realize that it’s going to take a very long time. We’re going to do the best we can, but in the interim, we do want to find intermediate solutions so that we’re not just waiting around for a cafeteria that’s going to take, frankly, a few years,” Tepedino stated.
They were also keen on focusing on goals more achievable for the USG, such as the promotion of BC events and making sure that all students are aware of the resources offered at campus. They also mentioned reforming club training to make it easier for clubs to submit requests for funding.
“We would want to have mentor and club training for all e-board members,” Tepedino said, later adding “We want to make sure that clubs understand where their money is coming from, how it’s being spent, and how they can request more.”
This same sentiment regarding student awareness of campus resources was also shared by Paul and Sanchez, who brought up reforming orientation to increase student awareness on resources and student involvement.
“Something that we wanted to start with, that Cyle had a great idea about, was reforming orientation. I’ve spoken with a lot of students who have told me they either didn’t have orientation or their orientation was lackluster,” Sanchez stated when answering the question on what the parties would do to increase student involvement.
The voting period for students will last until March 28.
Students interested in voting can do so via Bulldog Connection.