Hello Tar Heels,
As most are probably aware, Emilio Vicente’s platform writer recently came out against his former candidate in what many Emilio supporters see as a stab in the back. Fortunately, that whole incident is really irrelevant as to why Emilio is not the ideal candidate for SBP and why Andrew Powell is the candidate we should all support.
What we have garnered so far in this SBP election is that we have two very nice guys, who we would all want to sit down and have a beer with, running to be the head of our Executive Branch of Student Government. Both Andrew and Emilio have some noble goals that they wholeheartedly want to see implemented at this University, but so far, only Andrew has shown the experience and concrete plans necessary to turn those goals into policies and actions. Emilio has got some things that Andrew has not. He got an endorsement from Eva Longoria and two articles, one in the New York Times and one in the Huffington Post about his identity and experiences as an immigration advocate. Unfortunately for Emilio, being a really nice guy and standing for an ideal are not qualifications to run our University’s Student Government. In addition, national media and celebrities plugging a candidate for who he is, not what his platform is, do not belong in our Student Body President election. Yet, even after all this, the biggest indicator as to why Andrew Powell simply out qualifies Emilio came during last night’s SBP Run Off Debate.
The differences between Emilio and Andrew came to a sharp contrast throughout the evening. To every question, both candidates provided some excellent ideas ranging from listening sessions to flipped classrooms, but only Andrew provided hard facts to back up why his ideas are not only feasible, but also effective at tackling some of the biggest issues affecting our University. However, the most pressing issue of the night was clearly tuition. Emilio believed that in order to address this, Student Government must listen to students, because as it is currently, they do not. Andrew stated that this wasn’t the case because Student Government is made up of hundreds of students who clearly understood the issues affecting their friends and themselves. He countered that the real changes that must be made are streamlining the bureaucracy in Student Government, so that it is manageable, and cutting costs and inefficiency in the classroom. He has proposed the models of flipped classrooms and a smaller Executive Cabinet to effectively address his goals of cost cutting, efficiency, and a manageable Student Government. Emilio took issue with a flipped classroom format, citing a friend he knew who said she disliked it, but Andrew was able to back up his plans with facts that showed flipped classrooms to be astounding successes when implemented, improving grades by upwards of 11 points and cutting costs by nearly 37%. In this format the entire debate ensued.
Making sense of this, we find that Andrew simply was able to prove more effectively that his goals will work, whereas Emilio has simply been able to show his good intentions. In a race as important as this one, we must let our emotions subside and choose the candidate who has laid concrete plans backed with hard facts of their success. We must choose a candidate who has both the good intentions and the experience necessary to translate those intentions into good results. We must choose Andrew Powell.