After half-hour interviews with five of the six ASSU Executive slates and more than an hour of subsequent deliberation, the Editorial Board believes that David Gobaud and Greg Goldgof are the candidates that will best represent the entire student body during the 2008-2009 school year. All candidates interviewed were impressive and brought good ideas to the table, but Gobaud and Goldgof stood out from the array of exciting Executive slates because of their focus on graduate student issues, their idea-oriented campaign and their well-researched platform.

Gobaud and Goldgof, current seniors who will be co-terming next year, are the first all-graduate student slate in many years. It was clear that this slate had actively strived to understand both graduate and undergraduate concerns, as illustrated in the pair’s social and student-life platforms. For undergraduate students, they want to set up a “social shuttle,” which will run from GovCo to Mirrielees on the weekends to make it easier to get around campus late at night, and they want to organize a Beer-B-Q on the row as an alternative social event to the typical frat party. For graduate students, they want to set up graduate student speed dating, introduce new grad-student events like a dinner on the quad for masters students and transform The 750 bar into a real hang-out space for grad students.

Their detail-oriented platform extends beyond social and student-life ideas. They presented a concrete plan on how to increase diversity among graduate students and faculty based on the undergraduate section-leading model currently used by the Computer Science Department. They also are well-researched about the feasibility of much of their platform, having conducted many interviews with members of the administration about the ideas they seek to implement next year. One such idea is to have students keep their @stanford.edu addresses for life; they had already looked into the concept and think that it will cost about 10 cents per address to maintain the necessary storage space.

During their campaign, Gobaud and Goldgof have already experimented with better ways to reach students. Since many students spend much of their time on their computers, their campaigning has focused on using YouTube and Facebook to reach voters. They hope to carry this over into their term as executives by using Facebook polls and applications to increase accountability and feedback. Another major issue on their platform is reforming the underutilized ASSU Web site, as well as other official sites like Axess, to make them more useful to students. We believe the team is especially well-positioned to accomplish these goals because of their technical academic background and their experience developing projects such as the Stanford GER Treasure Hunter.

But Gobaud and Goldgof are not the only qualified candidates. We were particularly impressed by the experience and ideas of Jonny Dorsey and Fagan Harris. Dorsey and Harris are both charismatic and personable and would bring these assets to the executive position. Dorsey also has an unusual amount of executive experience having stopped out for two years to found and become the first Executive Director of FACE AIDS, a non-profit group that is now represented on over 150 campuses nationwide. The skills and knowledge that he gained from this experience would be invaluable in the ASSU Executive position.

The Dorsey-Harris slate has focused its campaign on some other notable issues. Mental health concerns of graduate and undergraduate students is one of the pair’s top priorities; they believe that the suicides on campus last year are an indication that even more work needs to be done. Dorsey and Harris have also run a sustainable and sweat-free campaign, using all-recycled paper and buying sweat-free t-shirts at considerable expense, and they hope to carry this mindset over to actual ASSU governance. Also, they want to use SSE, the business branch of the ASSU, to buy recyclable red cups in bulk so that student groups and houses can buy them at lower prices, encouraging sustainability despite the relative expense. The team would also have a “green party/event” label that they could attach to events on campus to encourage more sustainable practices amongst students.

The prospects for the ASSU seem promising as an unusual number of qualified, interesting and worthy slates are running to occupy its executive office next year. However, Gobaud and Goldgof will be in a unique position as co-terms to understand both undergraduate and graduate concerns. Specifically, we hope their election and administration will bring about a renewed interest in the ASSU within the graduate student community. The slate has produced fresh, concrete ideas aimed at enhancing the quality of life on campus and better connecting the ASSU with the student body. Their unusual grad-student standing and bundle of new ideas set them apart and earn them our endorsement in an exciting election for ASSU Executive.