Friday, January 16, 2009
A new coalition called Envision has emerged on the campus political scene and hopes to pose a significant threat to the incumbent party, United Students.
Envision vice presidential nominee Alex Porte, Great Falls, Va., junior and senate treasurer, said the coalition was working to gather a group of core members to form its platforms.
Porte said Envision was working to bring the most effective senators into the coalition, regardless of coalition affiliation. Last year Porte worked with the ConnectKU coalition and campaigned against his current running mate, J.J. Siler, Overland Park junior, who campaigned with United Students. Envision has now replaced ConnectKU and is competing against United Students and Students of Liberty.
“What we wanted to do was bring the best people from United Students and the best people from Connect who are doing great work and put them all together in one coalition,” Porte said. “We want to be able to come to students and say these are the people who are doing great work and we want you to re-elect them.”
He also said that although it was important to have senators who knew how to work within the system, Envision would also be looking for support from students at all levels of campus involvement.
“I think the perspective from people outside of Senate is so important because once you’re in Senate for a couple years you start seeing things from a Senate lens,” Porte said.
He said one issue Envision planned to tackle was the barrier that existed between Student Senate and other student organizations.
“The biggest problem with Student Senate right now is people don’t know about it,” Aaron Dollinger, Leawood sophomore and student senator said. “We’d like to make students more aware of the process.”
Many student organizations turn to Senate as a source of funding, but the Fall 2008 Senate budget dwindled at a much quicker pace than in previous years, leaving Porte, the current student body treasurer, frustrated by the lack of attention to budget.
“We want to have a presence on campus that basically says we’re fiscally responsible,” Porte said. “We want to restore a sense of civic leadership and civic service back to Student Senate.”
— — Edited by Chris Hickerson
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Comments
New coalition to join senate races
Connect, Part Deux.
New coalition to join senate races
Ditto, Hawks.
Here's what happens every year.
An opposition coalition arises, made up of mostly the same people from the old losing coalition, proposing the same old rhetoric.
They decide they can't win on their own, so they decide to pluck the most ambitious person from the other coalition and run them for president (often, this is the runner-up from the other coalition's nomination meeting).
Everyone gets really excited about this new coalition because they think they will win and then find out that the other coalition didn't pick this person for a reason.
Finally, the "new" and "innovative" coalition falls apart, loses, and the cycle repeats itself.
New coalition to join senate races
Seriously? We're 2 days into the semester and we're already talking about the Student Senate election? UDK needs to halt election stories until the date when groups can start campaigning. Please?
New coalition to join senate races
shutchins11, last year is the only time in recent history when what you described took place. In fact, Hannah Love and Ray Wittlinger, founders of United Students, were runners-up at the Ignite nominating meeting (Ray lost to Austin Kelly, who ended up starting Connect last year).
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