By Nicole Kobie
It’s encouraging that the SU VP events forum was entertaining and well-attended–hopefully it proves prophetic for that portfolio next year. Last Thu., Feb. 6, two of the three would-be VPs–Lawrence Bailey and Richard “Krafty” Bergen–spent an hour answering questions from current SU VP Events Irene Enyedy and numerous audience members. Third candidate Anant Patel missed the forum because of a conflict with his workplace.
Though Bailey and Bergen showed some obvious differences in style–Bailey was smooth and collected, whereas Bergen was enthusiastic and goofy–both agreed that tuition, apathy, event diversity and Dinos athletics should be areas of focus for the coming year.
“Tuition is the big one,” said Bergen. “We need to get people involved, aware and interested.”
“We’re beating this into your heads, but that’s because it’s important,” said Bailey.
As well, both candidates stressed the importance of involving students–especially first years–in campus life.
“Engineers are good at welcoming new students, even though they have the least free time,” explained Bailey.
“There’s not a lot of pride in this university,” added Bergen. “We need to get people involved.”
Bailey particularly focused on increasing the number of small events, stressing the importance of niche groups on campus.
“Small events are what makes the difference,” he explained. “If we have six big concerts and nothing in between, it’s a boring campus.”
Bergen promised to bring his significant experience in residence to events planning, especially to encourage Dinos awareness and support of services like Safewalk. Not wanting to fall-through on his platform commitments, Bergen was wary of making too many specific promises.
“I did promise to work my ass off, and I will,” he explained. “That’s one campaign promise I am going to fulfill.”
When asked to discuss the best qualities of their fellow candidates, Bailey and Bergen didn’t leave out the absent Patel. Instead, Bailey held up an Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail juice bottle as Patel’s representative, and proceeded to describe Patel as outgoing, friendly and fluid. Both Bailey and Bergen described each other in glowing, friendly terms.
“If I had to lose, losing to him [Bailey] would almost be winning… almost,” said Bergen, to much laughter.
“This school is really fortunate to have three candidates who would do really well,” added Bailey, before joining Bergen and the juice bottle in a group hug.