The Ohio State Undergraduate Student Government presidential and vice presidential candidates debated Tuesday night at the U.S. Bank Conference Theater in the Ohio Union.

The theater, with an occupancy of 294 people, was about two-thirds full of lively audience members sporting their favorite team’s T-shirts — green “Keepin’ It Fresh” T-shirts for presidential candidate Jordan Davis and vice presidential candidate Ashley Sinram, and red “We Are All Buckeyes” T-shirts for presidential candidate Micah Kamrass and vice presidential candidate Brad Pyle.

Before the event, the candidates flipped a coin off stage to decide who would speak first. The Davis/Sinram ticket won the toss.

The hourlong debate took place in a 60-60-30 second format, where one candidate was asked a question and had 60 seconds to answer, the opposing candidate had 60 seconds to rebut, and the initial candidate received another 30 seconds for ending remarks.

Moderated by Kevin Freeman, an OSU pre-law adviser and program manager for the politics, society and law scholars, the debate began with the vice presidential candidates. Freeman chose all questions asked during the debate, but submissions were from USG members and politics, society and law scholars.

Vice presidential candidates:

Reducing costs for students

One of the tenants of the Davis/Sinram platform is to have no mandatory student fees. With the 7.2 percent increase in tuition nearing, an increase in the Student Activity Fee and Ohio Union Fee, Sinram said she and Davis feel students “aren’t ready and aren’t willing to be paying as much as they are for the experience they have at Ohio State.”

Davis and Sinram want to stop approving fees from the administration and have “opt-in” service fees, where students wouldn’t have to pay fees for things many do not use, such as the study abroad fee. They also want to motivate the use of the textbook.osu.edu Web site, to provide more affordable textbooks for students.

With the increase in OSU fees, Kamrass and Pyle want to make sure they are listening to all students. They want USG to advocate to students during this financial change and make sure students are able to speak up. Pyle said it was weird the university increased fees by 3.6 percent twice in a row, instead of all at once, because there are laws preventing that.

“The student voice really should have been there, making sure the university was following the rules the first time,” Pyle said.

USG accessibility and accountability

Freeman asked the vice presidential candidates how they will remain accessible and accountable to students after the campaign because many students will forget about USG and how to contact the winners of the election.

Pyle said that “USG goes out for two weeks every spring, talks to as many students as it can, and acts like it wants to be a big part of the community, and then disappears for another year.” Kamrass and Pyle want to make themselves accessible and accountable by being on the Oval every day or every week to make sure students have the opportunity to talk to them.

The Kamrass and Pyle ticket also want to make sure they send USG members to visit every organization because “there are students out there that have really great ideas, but they just need a way to get them started,” Pyle said.

Sinram said she wants to make sure USG as a whole is accessible. It is important that every member is active and engaged with the students at OSU, she said. Davis and Sinram want to update the new USG ambassador program, where members visit various student organizations and explain what USG is and how it can help student organizations.

Davis and Sinram want students to know what USG is doing and what policies are passing — not through e-mails, not through Facebook, but by going into student organizations and “cultivating relationships,” Sinram said.

Campus concerns and awareness

Both Sinram and Pyle said their biggest concern about OSU’s campus is student safety.

If elected, Davis and Sinram want to strengthen OSU’s relationship with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office and change the Stop Teenage Opportunity to Purchase program, an underage drinking law enforcement project administered by the Franklin County Sheriff’s office. We cannot be excited about being OSU students unless we feel safe on campus, Sinram said.

With the changes they want to make to the STOP program, such as replacing mandatory incarceration with citations, they want students to feel police are there to keep them safe, not be predatory.

Davis and Sinram also want to expand the hours of the Student Safety/Escort Services, an OSU service that provides safe transportation during the evening and early morning hours for students and staff in the campus area.

Both candidates said they want to improve Buckeye Alerts, a system that sends campus emergency updates to students signed up for the alerts.

Sinram wants to make Buckeye Alerts more accessible by allowing students to sign up for the alerts on Buckeye Link. Her team also wants to add emergency blue lights to the insides of campus
buildings.

Pyle said he wants to make sure the alert system becomes an “opt-out” system for e-mail, and he wants the alerts to address what areas students should avoid during an emergency.

In Pyle’s rebuttal, he shared that during his freshman year, he saw police arresting students for underage drinking, and the next morning, he found out someone had been mugged while police were in the vicinity. Kamrass and Pyle want to be sure the police’s priority is protecting students, not arresting them.

“I would much prefer a few students drink underage than watch a student get mugged on campus,” Pyle said.

Pyle said he wants to see the Columbus Police and OSU Police work together even more and be more visible around the OSU area to make sure students and their belongings are safe.

Presidential candidates:

After a 5-minute break in the debate, Kamrass and Davis took the stage. Kamrass was left to fight for his team alone because Pyle left the debate early to attend an 8 p.m. class.

Semester conversion process

Kamrass acknowledged that many students felt the student government did not do a good enough job listening to students about the transition and vote to go to semesters. Kamrass said his ticket wants to do everything it can to represent student needs.

Kamrass and Pyle want to push for increased advising about how
credits will transfer so “no one has to be here longer than they choose to,” Kamrass said.

Kamrass added that the semester switch will also change how OSU student organizations function — how they build, organize and schedule — and he wants to make sure all student organizations are supported during this change.

Davis said that if elected, her job is crucial this year because of the semester conversion decisions being made. The leaders of student government need to be actively listening to students during these changes, she added. She wants to continually advocate for student seats on the committees looking at semester change revisions.

“Students need to be vocal and students need to have a voice and give feedback,” Davis said.

Davis said she will make sure students in the USG cabinets and Senate are collaborating to provide critical feedback about the semester change decisions, and that the faculty and administration are listening to students as they approve proposals.

Veteran transitions

An estimated 1,200 or more veterans currently attend OSU, Freeman said during his question. Both candidates want to help facilitate the transition process for veterans who attend OSU.

Kamrass wants to make the transition as seamless as possible for veterans because they’ve already done so much for us, he said. The Kamrass/Pyle platform wants to wave the application fee for veterans and provide credit for the college-level courses they took as part of their service.

“I don’t think it’s fair I can get credit for an AP biology class I took in high school, and our military servicemen can’t get credit for the difficult coursework they did,” Kamrass said.

OSU does not have a post-traumatic stress disorder counselor on campus and “that is unacceptable,” Davis said. Davis wants the university to hire someone in the post-traumatic stress area and hire more professional staff to guide veterans through the transition.

Davis also wants to make sure OSU adds more courses exclusively to veterans.

If elected president of USG, Davis said she will push to accomplish a lot. She said it is the role as the representative of the student body to accomplish as much as possible in the little time given. She wants to continue to push USG to do more and accomplish more, and she will continuously listen to students.

As president, Davis said she wants to make sure she pays attention to the “little things,” whether it’s creating a more diverse and multicultural community or supporting the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community.

Kamrass told the audience that not enough students know what USG is, what it’s doing or what it can do for them. Kamrass said one thing he wants to change is having students know what student government is, how to access it and what it can do to help.

“We need to increase our transparency,” Kamrass said. “We need to be out there actively engaging students rather than sitting held up in offices.”

The USG elections will take place from midnight Thursday until 11:59 p.m. Friday. To vote, visit usg.osu.edu.