CUSG elections begin on Monday: check out the candidates

Elections begin next week – do you know who you’re voting for? Take a look to find out their values and how they will rebuild after a difficult fall session.

This is the final part in a multi-part series.

Elections begin next week for representative at large positions and the tri-executive member and cabinet positions. Voting opens Monday, April 4, at 8 a.m. and closes Friday, April 8, at 8 p.m. Students can vote online for the members of their choosing. Voting information will be available through BuffPortal next week. 

On March 30, members of CUSG came together at the University Memorial Center in the Glenn Miller Ballroom for the 2022 candidates debate.

At this debate, candidates from the Amplify, Unity and Inspire tickets running for  tri-executive positions and 12 representative at large candidates discussed topics that will ultimately affect the students, staff and community of Boulder. 

 Students’ safety, mental and physical wellbeing and overall inclusivity at CU Boulder were the main concerns of the debate. All tickets and representatives at large discussed how CU Boulder needs to take accountability for its students’ safety and health. In the past school year, students have called out the University for their practices surrounding safety on campus and in the Boulder community. 

From wildfires near campus such as the Marshall fires and most recently the NCAR fire, to the King Soopers shooting last spring, the emergency lockdown in October and February shelter in place off-campus, to students’ safety on and off campus during activities, students have expressed concerns and candidates have taken note. 

Candidates at the debate noted that the CU alerts system and CU Boulders plan of action to keep its students safe have not been effective. 

Junior Andrew Harvey, running for the tri- executive position for the Inspire ticket, proposes a new app as a solution. This app places responsibility on the students to report threats they see around on and off campus. Other students who are around this threat can verify if this threat is happening and once there are enough reports there will be an alert sent out to the entire student body. To hold students responsible for their submissions they will be required to sign in with their student Identikey to prevent fake or “prank” alerts from being sent in. 

Harvey has faith that this app will be successful because schools such as the University of California, Los Angeles have already had success using an app like this. “It’s not something we have to develop from the ground,” he said. “It’s something we can adopt and use.” 

Carter Galyardt, who is running for representative at large for CU4ALL, raised a concern about relying on students to report threats. He shared his personal experience with an emergency situation that happened in the middle of the night that no one was aware of. 

“So not always are there students there to report seeing something. Sometimes there are threats that are in the middle of the night that are real threats, and there are people walking around like me in danger,” Ghallagher said. 

Lucie Nguyen, a candidate running for a tri-executive position on the Unity ticket believes that CU Boulder needs to implement a safety checklist that is designated to each building. She wants to work with the CU’s police department to make a plan of action for each specific building. 

“There is not a perfect solution. But it’s definitely a step in the right direction,” Nguyen said.

Among safety issues, candidates discussed sexual assault on campus. Sophomore Hope James and Senior Chyna Varner, tri-executive candidates for the Amplify ticket, want to help educate and work closely with Greek life in order to make this community a more inclusive and safe place for all. One way to do this is to make a consent education course mandatory for students to complete before registering for classes. In addition, they want to make sure that every student knows what affirmative consent is. Affirmative consent is when someone needs to verbally say “yes” and that a person should not just rely on reading someone’s body language. 

“I think it really helps with bringing down the rate of sexual assault, people knowing when they should like stop or knowing when they have a yes when it comes to interactions they have with people,” Varner said. 

Nguyen wants to implement a new way to help students who have experienced sexual assault. The main goals of Promoting Restorative Initiatives to Address Misconduct [PRISM] which would be housed in and used by  the Title Nine office are to hold offenders responsible for their actions and give survivors a way to heal by seeing action being taken. The purpose of Prism is to help survivors get justice and educate the assaulter so an incident like this doesn’t happen again. This program has been implemented at the University of Michigan and it has been successful, she said. 

Additionally, students spoke about improving mental health resources on campus. Candidates suggested that the resources CU Boulder has to offer are not sufficient enough to accommodate students’ mental health. The pandemic and unforeseen emergency events have taken a toll on students, staff and community. Candidates provided possible solutions to implement if elected. 

Ella Salazar who is a representative at large candidate for Amplify, agrees that CU needs to be better at accommodating students’ mental health needs. For example, Salazar wants CU to allow students to have mental health days and sick days. 

James wants to work with Counseling & Psychiatric Services (CAPS) closely to have more mental health days. She also wants CU professors to track how many days their students miss class due to mental health reasons and reach out to see how they can help. This is important for professors to do because, “A lot of students that do have mental health struggles or who don’t have the money to get help, don’t know where to go. They don’t have the energy to do it. And it’s not fair to assume that they can do it.”

Harvey wants to focus on how the professors handle grading and communication with students that may be experiencing mental health issues. He wants to hold professors accountable for accommodating students’ needs. 

“Whether it be their mental health, or respecting a cultural holiday, professors do not have a personal relationship with their students. And this is really affecting students’ well-being and their academic performance,” Harvey said.

Candidates also talked about CU Boulder’s lack of diversity. It was reported that in the fall of 2021, 66.2% of enrolled students identified as white, with 26.3% students identifying as racial and ethnic minorities. 

Nick Monroy, running for representative at large for Inspire, called out CU’s lack of diversity and inclusions, “CU loves to brag in its advertising about how it’s [located in] one of the happiest, healthiest and best cities to live in America. So I think it’s important for CUSG that we make sure that every individual and every group, big and small, feels that same sentiment and can say that same phrase with confidence.”

Milan Enayat, running for the tri-executive position for Inspire, wants to see the staff become more diverse. Currently 18% of CU’s faculty are people of color and 38% of CU’S staff are people of color, Enayat reported in the debate. 

“With your teaching staff you want your students to be able to relate to you. You want them to be able to be mentors for you. And we need to promote inclusion with our teaching staff and then with our students,” Enayat said. 

Ticket break down

The three tickets running for tri-executive and cabinet positions are: Amplify, Inspire and Unity.

The Amplify ticket is composed of tri-executive candidates, Arthur Benjamin Didinsky, Hope James and Chyna Varner. Amplify to these students means, “Amplifying Student voices, DEI, Safety, and accountability around CU,” they posted on their Instagram account.

The Inspire ticket is composed of tri-executive candidates, Milan Enayat, Ben Lansbury and Andrew Harvey. Their platforms are DEI, sexual assault prevention, mental health, transparancy and CUSG reforms, according to their Instagram account.

The Unity ticket is composed of tri-executive candidates, Rachel Hill, Chloe Nicklas and Lucie Nguyen—the first all-female identifying tri-executive ticket in over 40 years.  The Unity ticket’s Instagram account reports an emphasis on unity, equity and safety, that comprise the cornerstones of this ticket’s platform.. 

Each ticket has a cabinet running alongside them and representatives at large, some of whom are affiliated with the tri-executive tickets. For the legislative branch, there are currently 12 representatives running for election. They are Jessica Alchuler, Julia Brehm, Brandon Charlson, Travier Craddock, Elizabeth Craig, Peter Goettler, Nick Monroy, Christine Nguyen, Ella Salazar Acosta, Sally Webster, Carter Galyardt and Clark Windmueller. 

Sally Webster, Peter Goettler and Christine Nguyen are running for representative at large with the Unity ticket. Nick Monroy and Julia Brehm are running for representative at large with the Inspire ticket. Brandon Charlson, Ella Salazar and Jessica Alschuler are running for representative at large with the Amplify ticket. 

Clark Windmueller, Elizabeth Craig and Carter Galyardt are running together for representatives at large under the CU4All ticket. Finally, Travier Craddock is running independently for representative at large. 

These independent tickets are separate from the tri-executive candidate tickets. CU4All is running on values of safety and transparency. Craddock is running with the values of safety, wellness and accessibility. The two independent tickets have butted heads online after Craddock publicly stated being transgender “is a sign of mental illness,” according to one of his Instagram posts. He says mental illness and suicide is something he wants to bring awareness to. 

Additionally, Craddock published sensitive comments regarding Rachel Levine, the highest-ranking openly transgender military official who was one of USA Today’s women of the year and Lia Thomas, a transgender NCAA swimmer who is breaking records. 

“At the end of the day, I believe that there are two genders, male and female no matter what happens, I’m just not going to not believe that,” Craddock said. “I don’t agree with it. But at the end of the day, you’re going to make your choices based off how you want to live your life, because it’s your life. And I 100%, like, respect you and everybody else that supports you.”

The Bold examined the social media accounts of the other candidates for tri-executive, cabinet positions and legislative council and did not find similarly controversial posts.

The CU4All ticket has publicly announced that they do not support Craddock’s views. “In light of recent posts made by a CUSG candidate expressing transphobic comments, CU4All wants to make it very clear that we support our trans and gender non-conforming students. We will represent you and support your identity in every way we can,” their Mar. 18 Instagram post said. 

Craig, from the CU4All ticket noted that since yesterday, Mar 31, is international trans visibility day, their ticket supports the LGBTQ community and the students in that community at CU. 

One of CU4All’s plans is to hold casual events for students to get to know their representatives, since many people on CU’s campus don’t know who is representing them and their student lives. 

“If we’re being completely honest, like nobody knows how large of a budget and how much power they actually have, which to us, is insane,” she said. “So yeah, under our transparency ticket, we’re really wanting to keep students updated and have kids actually understand what it is that CUSG does.”

Craig and her constituents know that CU students may not be the most popular with local Boulder residents. 

“We’re just really focused on making everybody feel like they have a place on campus, regardless of their identities, and making sure we feel like CU Boulder is a part of the larger boulder community, because when campuses are involved with their community, and especially the people around it, we think it makes the experience at college just so much better,” Craig said. “And it really elevates the status of CU Boulder in relation to its outside community.”

Students have the opportunity to research the candidates, both tri-executive and representatives at large via their Instagram accounts.

Q&A

Amplify Ticket: 

What are the core values that your team is running for? 

“Diversity, equity inclusion and student voices. One of the things the presidents get to do is choose to hire. We want to make sure that we’re hiring inclusively promoting of all backgrounds to work in our department. And then we also want to work with admissions to reach underprivileged communities, as well as talk to Colorado state legislators about decreasing tuition and increasing scholarships.” -Arthur Benjamin Didinsky

“Just to add on to the idea of reaching out to state legislators that support funding for higher education, public higher education and so we want to reach out to those people and maybe reach other legislators as well to create sort of that coalition to try to push for more funding, which would hopefully decrease tuition for CU and then that would hopefully, in turn, allow for more diversity. 

“Something that we have been looking into is trying to allow for student organizations to have more of a voice. So specifically, we’ve been looking into the bylaws for funding for cultural student groups versus other student groups. And for some reason, the bylaws are different so it takes a lot more time for different cultural organizations to get funding rather than just being able to show up to a hearing, get a budget approved. Basically, they have to plan way more in advance, which I think definitely hinders their ability to reach their students and do more as their own organization.

“We want to be able to hear student organizations and what’s working for them, what’s not working for them and have more of a direct link between student government and those organizations since that’s such a big part of our study body.” – Hope James

“The difference between the two funding boards is one will take two to three weeks to go through funding and the other one will take three months. So if a multicultural organization wants to hold an even and it’s in October, they’ll have to start planning in July.” -Arthur Benjamin Didinsky

“On our campus, they’re trying to be more accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities or an emergency, but they could do a better job with that and I definitely want to push for anytime there’s events were there are speakers, we need to have sign language interpreters. And I know a lot of buildings on campus are not necessarily accessible for people with wheelchairs. So I think we should work on communication with Disability Services and buildings on campus, ADA friendly and more accessible.” -Chyna Varner

What do you hope to accomplish if you were elected? 

“One of the things that we found in the previous administration is that it’s very hard to talk to them, they seem very reclusive. We want to have an open door policy with our office so anytime any of us are in the office, our doors are open to any students and CUSG elected officials. For student safety, we really are trying to make sure that the alert system gets improved.” -Arthur Benjamin Didinsky

“As far as student voices go, we want to help be there for student workers because that is also a giant population of our student body. I think a lot of workers don’t know how to stand up for themselves or get their needs met. So we want to maybe create a position that focuses solely on being the voice for student workers and then also focus on more legislation that gives student workers a safety net so that they can’t just be dropped out of whatever position they’re doing.” -Hope James

Can you elaborate on your team’s mission statement?

“Our big thing is amplifying students and the things that are going to benefit students.” -Hope James

“There’s a lot of students on this campus. Every single one of them experiences University differently and we want to help every single student who comes here to get the best experience out of this university,” -Arthur Benjamin Didinsky

Given last semester’s allegations of racism and structural issues, how are you going to address racial inequities within CUSG if you are elected?

“Student government, even though it impacts the people actively within government, that’s a smaller population obviously than the entire student body. There are problems within CUSG that we want to address. I recently joined as a legislator and I have firsthand seen a lot of the problems coming from a lack of communication. So we would want to have a little bit more bonding things going on, which seems like a basic idea but I wasn’t able to get to know anybody at first when I joined, I basically had to thrust myself into things. We want the branches to work closer together and have more communication because there has been a lot of animosity between the executive and the legislative branch recently.” -Hope James

“There’s a lot of weird room and not specific things in the bylaws and the government rules of CUSG which I think has allowed for a lot of people to interpret it the way that they want, which can make other people’s voices silenced, which is really problematic. So we would definitely want to take a lot closer reading our Constitution, Robert’s rules, which are governing documents and basically eliminate any unnecessary language that can shut other people down. I think making CUSG a more comfortable place because I think a lot of people just haven’t been able to stick around because their mental health has been hurt because it can get really personal and stressful.” -Hope James

Inspire Ticket: 

What are the core values that your team is running for? 

“Our main goal is just to fully represent each and every student group at CU and make sure that they have enough representation and awareness for themselves. And I think it goes into a lot of different categories. I think the first one is just promoting diversity and inclusion on our campus, I think that’s one of the biggest things that campus lacks at doing, and then we’re also very passionate about mental health and making sure that campus is doing enough to support their students.” -Milan Enayat

“There’s a lot there’s also sexual assault reform or responsiveness and awareness that we want to work on to make sure that the universe is holding perpetrators of sexual assault, accountable, while also supporting their survivors in the way that there’s the surviors need. And then we also just hope to do some internal transparency stuff within CUSG, but then also with the administration to make sure students are aware about decisions being made in any threats on campus with emergency alert systems and making sure that the university is really valuing student perspectives when making these decisions.” -Milan Enayat

“We also want to improve communication and transparency within CU, whether that be the alert system, we want to implement a new system because the current one is failing. Just to keep students safe as well as transparency, we want students to know who’s making decisions, who has the power to make decisions, and we want to use our platform, as representatives of the student body, to form a bridge of communication between the administration and students as a whole.” – Ben Lansbury

What do you hope to accomplish if you were elected? 

“We want to use existing software and it would be, schools like UCLA use this app, it would be basically an app similar to the navigation app Waze but allow all students to log in with their IdentiKeys and report instances of crime on or off-campus right when they see them happen to allow students who see them happen, vary they happened. And once it meets a certain threshold, an alert will be sent out to all students in the area.” -Ben Lansbury

“And this would also allow student groups to alert students when and where they’re having events on campus. And it can even be a tool students can use to navigate to class on the first day of school.” -Ben Lansbury

“At the end of the day, the school is failing to do that, to keep students safe. So we hope that this app, along with other things implemented, will make this a safer community.” -Andrew Harvey 

Can you elaborate on your team’s mission statement?

“With our mission statement, like I said before, it’s really just, we want to be there for all student groups on campus and make sure that they all feel welcomed and included. And by doing that we are committed to working with these groups directly. We started these relationships now and we want to continue them and grow them in office. And we hope that like with those relationships, we can actually make change on the pillars that we’re campaigning on. We don’t want this to be a campaign of broken promises. And we want to make sure that everything that we are passionate about and the changes that we want to see actually are accomplished.” -Milan Enayat

Given last semester’s allegations of racism and structural issues, how are you going to address racial inequities within CUSG if you are elected? 

“So the one thing that I would really hope is all concerns be addressed and that conversations between, instead of like retaliatory conversations, they’re actually more focused on finding the root of the problem and really making sure that everybody is heard and valued. They also want to make sure that CUSG is a diverse workspace so that we can have that diverse perspectives and hopefully it will really accomplish t eliminating that issue within CUSG.”  -Milan Enayat

“We also want to amplify groups that have historically been underrepresented, like multicultural organizations. We want to work towards mending the bond between the mass student population that minority groups feel overpowered by. We want to mend that bond and create a more inclusive space for all.” -Ben Lansbury

“We also want a lot of the change to be driven by these multicultural groups, organizations.” -Andrew Harvey

Unity Ticket: 

What are the core values that your team is running for? 

“We all three have a passion area. And so the three of us combine them to make our three values, unity, equity and safety. So for unity, that was my passion. We’re all passionate about all of them but we each spearhead one of them. So unity is like uniting the student organizations with CUSG because right now, I feel like there’s kind of a disconnect between all the student organizations and CUSG. A lot of them don’t even know that we can fund them and so we want to make the funding process easier for students and increase the funding cap from $3,000 to $5,000. Our goals here are very tangible and we know that we can accomplish them.” -Rachel Hill

“For equity, that was my passion point. When I think of equity, I’m more thinking about accessibility for all students, obviously the community right now but also prospective students. I know that a lot of students may be turned off by some things that CU has in place that are just not accessible for the broader range of people. We want to work with appointed liaisons of the multicultural disability, LBGTQ + and DEI in our cabinet if elected to ensure that we create accessibility for every person, every marginalized community.” -Chloe Nicklas

“Moving on to safety, there’s really two initiatives that we want to be pushing. Our first one is going be fighting sexual assault. Let me rephrase that, not really fighting sexual assaults, unfortunately that is a hard issue to tackle. We really just want to bring alternative ways of justice to CU students. So the program that we’re proposing works with the Title Nine office, it’s called PRISM, promoting restorative initiatives for sexual misconduct. Essentially, what the program entails is that if you feel like you were facing sexual misconduct, you would go to this program and meet with a councelor and meet with them alongside your assault. It could be your friends, like you don’t want them to go to jail, but you’re obviously emotionally distraught because you’re not able to find justice. So they’re really being punished in a way that would help them become a better person and that’s the whole point of PRISM. Moving on to our second initiative revolving around safety, it’s super basic and cliche but it works and it has been proven to work. It’s having a basic safety checklist in every building. This idea was brought up by a guy named Delaine Young, a current student with a background in military security. Our whole point is not to just do what we think is the best idea, it’s to do what other students think is best. So in tackling that transparency issue, we propose that before a situation even happens, we have a safety checklist. Because, unfortunately, emergency situations do happen at CU and we’re not the safest campus.” -Lucie Nguyen

Can you elaborate on your team’s mission statement?

“I think the biggest thing is that we want tangible change. We’re not here to just present high in the sky ideas that we think are going to get votes. We have our goals and we know how to implement them and all that will take is us being elected to make those changes. That’s why we’re running because we want to make a difference in a year and the time that we have.” -Rachel Hill

Given last semester’s allegations of racism and structural issues, how are you going to address racial inequities within CUSG if you are elected? 

“I think listening to and making sure that we are hearing and understanding the stories of those who were affected and who are affected. I think that’s what’s important, is recognizing more harm was done and working to make sure that that harm doesn’t happen again.” -Rachel Hill

“I think CU has so many different offices and resources for us to reach out to and I think has like tri-execs, we would just highlight those better. They’re just not acknowledged enough and I think we would just do better.” -Lucie Nguyen

“I think as tri-execs we would combine our forces instead of having the whole executive versus legislative like I think that if we are elected, we would really try to meld them together again. As tri-execs we want to hear everyone out.” -Chloe Nicklas

“We’re still feeling the effects, it’s still a topic of conversation in the executive branch and legislative branch. It came from a historic rift between the branches and it’s going to continue to create a rift in the branches. I think all the tickets running want there to be a better relationship between executive and legislative but because of this historic disconnect and this historic hatred between the branches, I don’t know if CUSG can ever get over it completely. And it’s not just because of what happened last fall, it’s been happening for years. It’s tough and it hurts students and we have such a big budget to use and so much power, it’s sad that we have used it to hurt students.” – Rachel Hill

Originally reported for CU News Corps 

Additional reporting by Dawson Drew, Georgia Worrell and Amber Carlson