CONCRETE candidates cheer on Huskers while waiting for results

Erik Mellgren spent the last hour and a half of his campaign to become president of the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska jumping up and down alongside his running mate in the Red Zone. He heckled the refs and cheered for the Huskers and reminisced of the past month he spent changing the way students campaign for student government.

Mellgren, a junior biology major and Hannah Ledford, a  junior international studies major, lost the three-way race for president and internal vice-president of ASUN last night. The duo received 611 votes in yesterday's election – 19 percent of the total votes cast.

The CONCRETE party registered to run for ASUN on the last possible day, Feb. 4. They spent the next month relying mainly on YouTube clips and word-of-mouth advertising to promote their lone campaign promise: to build a sidewalk from the Beadle Center to the Vine Street Fields.


Despite not being elected, Mellgren can still consider some parts of his campaign a success.

"It shows that ASUN doesn't have to be filled with people who are uptight and take themselves too seriously," he said.

The entire CONCRETE campaign was financed by Ledford. She bought a large piece of cloth for $9 that they cut into fragments and wrote "vote for CONCRETE" on.

"We kind of took (the campaign) negative, but kind of a funny negative," Ledford said. "You can't compare this to a real campaign; at no point did I feel like a real politician."

The results of the election were not in when the basketball game came to a close. Mellgren and Ledford parted afterwards, Ledford went to an intramural soccer game and Mellgren returned to Selleck Residence Hall, where he is a resident assistant, to participate in a doughnut eating contest to raise money for cancer research.


It was mere seconds after Mellgren and his eating buddy downed 63 donut-holes in 11 minutes that he got a call and was told the results.

He never turned away or appeared disappointed during the call. When he hung up, he announced proudly that the CONCRETE executives had received "20-something percent" of the student vote.


"Good for second place," Mellgren said.

"That's pretty good for just wanting to build a sidewalk and only paying $9," he said. "The only regret I have is that we didn't force a run-off to have another week of making negative campaign ads."

But there will be CONCRETE representation in the next ASUN. Matt Boring, a sophomore music major, was the third CONCRETE party member. He was elected as a student senator to represent the Hixon-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts.


"I'm really excited to have a chance to represent our party's platform," Boring said. "(Mellgren and Ledford) were pretty great to work with."


The CONCRETE party never took themselves too seriously. And in some ways, Mellgren is glad the student body didn't take them too seriously either.


"If the student body would have voted in a party with only one platform there probably would be something wrong with that," he said.