By Allan Woods
Students may have a difficult time finding differences between this year’s RyeSAC presidential candidates—but if they look hard, they’ll find some.
Current v.p. Education Cory Wright and v.p. Administration Atif Asghar agreed on most major issues during The Eyeopener’s second annual Grill the Candidates debate last Thursday night in Pitman Hall’s cafeteria.
Both candidates supported student fee increases in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Ryerson’s membership in the Canadian Federation of Students and continuing to work with administration for the construction of a student centre.
But there are some differences between the two.
“I want to keep my focus on Ryerson and its internal issues,” Asghar said.
He said he will encourage student groups to become more involved in the school. He also plans to set up a system to tell Ryerson students what their RyeSAC representatives are doing.
Asghar was questioned about his campaign’s lack of publicity—after almost one week campaigning, his posters hadn’t appeared in Jorgenson Hall—especially since his main platform is to increase student awareness.
“I’m starting slowly to put up posters in my hometown—engineering,” he said.
Asghar also plans to talk to about 300 students before the Feb. 9 elections. He said he has talked to about 50 so far.
Wright’s primary interest is the development of a student centre, but he also wants to unite community services such as RyePRIDE, the Women’s Centre and the Food Room by appointing one co-ordinator to oversee them.
When Wright was reminded of his failure to follow through on last year’s promise to provide students with the results of course and instructor evaluations, he said he hasn’t completely failed.
“Although I haven’t been able to achieve that goal we have been able to put a star on it,” he said.
Publishing these evaluations has since been championed by v.p. Education candidate Ghassan Sulaiman.
The Eyeopener hosts another all-candidates debate in the Hub next Thursday at 1 pm.
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