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Aaron Smith ’08: Dance Marathon, Stanford Athletics, Stanford Tour Guides
Kyle Ladewig ’08: IFC President, IFC recruitment Chair, Sigma Chi Recruitment/Social Chair
Goals:
Relate to the student body on a personal level, make the ASSU more accessible, improve OSA’s relationship with student groups, revise OSA policy, create a Cardinal Calendar for campus events, offer more late-night dining options, revive the Course guide, host a Stanford Student Leadership Summit, reinstate The Band and Big Game Bonfire
The Daily: How’s your campaign going so far? Have there been any particular challenges or successes in running?
Kyle Ladewig: We haven’t been so big on flyering and making these big banners because what we have realized is that name recognition is a huge part of a campaign. We kind of run a different kind of campaign, which is to talk face-to-face with students and run this personal campaign, which is how we will actually take on the job as ASSU executives.
TD: You entered the race a little later than the other candidates. Do you think you’ve gotten enough publicity since then to successfully get to the executive office?
Aaron Smith: We were trying to figure out what’s the best way to apply ourselves. We’ve been involved with all these Stanford student groups at a very microscopic level. We are just trying to communicate to people what we are and what we’re going to do.
KL: I think a lot of other candidates who haven’t been involved with student life are at a deficit with us. They’ve been involved in this mad rush to go out and contact people and make those connections. We’ve been making those connections for the past three years.
TD: What would you say are some of the most important issues to your campaign?
KL: One thing we’re trying to set forward on our campaign and on our Web site is we want to impact student life on a day-to-day basis and we want to create concrete initiatives that will actually impact students. One of our ideas is reforming the Office of Student Activities (OSA). I have a very close relationship with the OSA. I talk with Nanci Howe and Peggy Chung on an almost daily basis. We’ve actually had a talk with them about how we can put these issues forward, how we can change the OSA and how we can make it more user friendly. We’ll be creating a student advisory committee to perform quarterly reviews of the OSA to get student input. We’ll also be helping them transition from a paper-based system to an electronic system for events submission.
TD: On one of the articles on our Web site in the student comment box, one student wrote, “The only people who run are serious resume-pushers who spend thousands of dollars to get elected.” I’ve asked this question to everyone — how would you respond to that complaint?
AS: One of the things is we’re trying to show is that we’re not politicans. This is not a stepping stone for me. The reason why we decided to run so late is because we’ve been involved with all of these student groups beforehand. We’ve constantly held leadership positions trying to get more things done, and we looked at the next step. What’s the next step? That’s ASSU President and Vice President.