 "Photo: Matt Buxton")
Concern about student fees was front and center at the Party of Hope and Change’s official announcement of their candidacy Wednesday in the 2008-2009 Association of Students at the University of Nebraska election race.
The party, headed by junior broadcasting major Andrew Lacy, sophomore advertising major Nick Goodwin and sophomore business major HoWai Ng, is one of three groups working to snag students’ votes March 4.
The other parties, CONCRETE and CONNECT, previously made their official announcements.
Backed by the image of an American flag, presidential nominee Lacy discussed statistics from a 2009-10 ASUN budget report. Students pay roughly $400 per semester in student fees while ASUN’s total expenditures increase, he said.
“(Students) are concerned with our checkbooks in this time of recession,” Lacy said. “We want non-essential spending cut and student fees lowered.”
A change his party would make, Lacy said, is splitting the three building projects outlined in the Campus Wellness student fee referendum into separate proposals, instead of packaging them together. The referendum includes projects at the East Campus Recreation Center, the City Campus Rec Center and the University Health Center.
“We believe that’s a bad policy,” Lacy said. “They should stand or fall on their own merits.”
Lacy also criticized a proposal that would expand benefits for executive ASUN members and NU on Wheels being “$1,500 in the red.”
Attendance at the announcement was sparse: Only a handful of onlookers not part of the proceedings attended, which members of Hope and Change attributed to a lack of student interest.
Meghan Rihanek, a sophomore French and advertising major, was among those attendees. Rihanek said she liked the party’s focus on finances, but wanted to see more emphasis on student involvement.
Comments from internal vice president Goodwin afterward might have addressed her concerns.
While running mate Lacy’s “big thing” is the financial side, Goodwin said his passion is for increasing connection between ASUN and other major university organizations, such as the Residence Hall Association.
“We’re just a bunch of kids, a bunch of students like everyone else...,” he said. “We’re trying as hard as we can to understand what students want.”
renaeblum@dailynebraskan.com
Thank you for being such a great element for the victory of the Hope and Change party, because Gold does not fear a refiner's fire, or in this case a nutcase's mudslinging.
I will vote on March 4th for someone with courage enough to articulate his beliefs and not be ashamed of his beliefs. I actually didn't know he had such fine fashion sense. I will vote for the Reagan and Limbaugh clad Lacy.