The Daily Cougar hosted Tuesday’s Student Government Association presidential and vice presidential runoff debate between Carlos Reyes, left, and Prince Wilson, right, for the elections that will be held today and Thursday. | Travis Hensley/The Daily Cougar
The Student Government Association runoff presidential candidates, Vice President Prince Wilson and Director of Finance Carlos Reyes, met Tuesday to address their agendas and answer questions from students during a debate hosted by The Daily Cougar.
Wilson said the three main areas of concern he will focus on are tuition, campus safety and helping the University achieve flagship status.
“When we think about tuition,” Wilson said, “we have to understand how the University works, how the budget works, where the money is going to go and what are the priorities.”
In his rebuttal, Reyes he will zero in on improving security, educating students on parking options and building school pride.
He said while developing his agenda, he wanted to focus on goals that are attainable and benefit students.
“One of the things that we did (before coming up with our agenda), we pulled about 500 students and asked them what their concerns were,” Reyes said. “They said it was security, parking and school pride.”
Both candidates addressed parking, but their proposed solutions differ.
Reyes said he wants to focus on educating students of the many programs already available to them to alleviate the parking problem.
“Parking is a pretty good situation,” he said. “We have all these great parking programs, but people don’t know about them.”
Wilson said he wants to create a rental car program for freshmen to help solve parking congestion. He also suggested promoting carpooling and mass transportation.
“Building more parking spaces is just a temporary solution,” he said.
Way to go Prince. Yes we have problems on our campus that need to get fixed and 37000 students, not 500. I know you will do a great Job as our President
Are you serious?!? Were you even there. I was and as a student here I would be very concerned about our well being if Prince is elected. When asked questions, all he did was offer very vague responses, never gave real world solution like Carlos did and he could barely control himself up there. He seemed extremely uncomfortable up there.
Carlos on the other hand was very calm and collected. He was able to offer real world solutions for our problems. Carlos has a checklist of things he will accomplish while Prince has a platform of things he would like to do.
I’d rather have someone who will actually do something rather than talk about doing something.
Concerned for your well being if Prince is elected? Wow, you either really have a lot of faith in the ability, power, and effectiveness of our student government, or you have a tendency for the melodramatic. Possibly a bit of both. You’d be perfect for the SGA.
As for me, I voted, but I know that no matter who wins, neither candidate will make me concerned for my well being.
The focus on parking by Carlos doesn’t make much sense. If we want to become a Tier one school, we need more students staying on campus. This means that students shouldn’t be worried about parking their cars. Expanding parking lots is just a short-sided solution to a bigger problem. Build more Dorms, and get more students to live on them. The students will feel safer since more of the crime happens at parking lots! This also builds a school culture as students will attend the football and bball games. They will become more loyal to the school and be more likely to become potential contributors to the university in the future. This then builds up an endowment which allows the university to expand more with better facilities. New rail lines are coming by 2014 around the university. Why drive when you can use the efficient rail?
Adding more parking lots is not the answer.
I don’t know the guy personally, but just from this article, Wilson seems to have a more cohesive plan over just adding new parking lots and adding “security”.
Yeah, because a student car rental program is soo much more realistic. Think of the insurance costs alone. Especially considering most of these freshman are under 21, typically the bare minimum most people have to be to rent a car.
And while UH is steamrolling plans to build new housing (1100 new beds in the fall), the fact remains that our school is non-traditional and those students typically drive to work, school, and home. Parking is an issue, but Carlos has the understanding that it’s not an issue SGA has any tangible control over. So what does he do? Instead of making empty promises, he comes up with something SGA can focus on, student information and education, a key part of the overall goal of SGA.
How about speaking out against things like Frontier Fiesta that make an already horrible parking situation virtually intolerable?
Is there really a legitimate reason it has to be held in Robertson? I can name probably a dozen other spaces it could realistically be held without inconveniencing a far greater number of people than will actually attend the event. And all this during a week when most students are in midterms. I guarantee you there are people skipping class, staying home, and winding up late to class for what is basically a fraternity event.
Not to mention the effect this has on pride and on how welcome commuters feel. Activist organizations complain that people won’t attend meetings, and things like Frontier Fiesta’s parking theft contribute to that. Who want’s to drive to a school that doesn’t respect or welcome their participation?
Haha, take on the beast, Will. Take on the beast.
Beast or not, it’s laughable that no one is bringing this up except for me. These SGA candidates should be bringing this up, seeing as how SGA has a tangible role to play in the Frontier Fiesta.
Wonder where apathy comes from at UH? Look no further than Robertson Stadium at 10am tomorrow. Frontier Fiesta and everyone involved in it can chew me.
Parking is a top complaint, year after year at UH. It gets lip service, but then crap like Frontier Fiesta makes it worse, and no one but a few individual students speak up. No one in the SGA, no one in the administration, and no one on the committee cares. Parking won’t get better without the SGA and other organizations that claim to speak for the STUDENTS actually representing the commuter.
People who don’t even go to UH know about our horrible parking situation, it’s something we’re known for, for better or for worse. Closing off half the spaces in Robertson is so unbelievably inept and inconsiderate I would laugh if it weren’t so offensive. Dysfunctional, disrespectful things like this really reinforce the notion that this is merely “Cougar High.”