On the eve of voting in the Student Government Association election, the two candidates met in a small classroom in Hubbard for a rare event.

The candidates sat in front of a group of their peers and moderators, taking questions over their plans should they be elected SGA president.

With this backdrop, the SGA candidates participated in a debate Tuesday afternoon to help students determine who to vote for.

Presidential candidate Darren Beckham is the head of the Students Unite ticket and started the debate.

“These are important issues; these are important decisions that we are all making for who to vote for, and who our future leaders will be,” Beckham said.

Sean Mclemore, the presidential candidate for the Shockers United in Reality & Vision (SURV), echoed Beckham’s sentiments at the start.

“We do have a lot riding on this. When I first started coming to the SGA, I didn’t think it was anything substantial,” Mclemore said. “But once I started to be more involved with it and growing with it, I realized that in fact it is a very substantial organization.”

After their opening statements, the moderators asked the candidates a series of questions ranging from their campaign goals, SGA’s role in Kansas politics, and the issue of smoking on campus.

Beckham said his campaign centered around three main issues: advocating for student issues during the changes for the campus, increasing the professionalism of SGA, and representing issues that come from different views on campus.

Mclemore agreed that work needed to be done to help coordinate with the university administration, but said other issues, such as hunger awareness amongst students, deferred maintenance, research and getting SGA to go to the students, were more important.

Deferred maintenance, in which projects to improve or repair campus facilities are held off, was a core part of Mclemore’s message during the debate. 

“A lot of people will come to Koch Arena and say, ‘Wow, this is a really great arena.’” Mclemore said. “Then they get into the inner part of the university and they say that things are not as great.”

He also talked about how SGA should work with the university’s administration in working to help develop more research on campus.

Beckham had issues with these points.

“I’m concerned by my opponent’s fixation on deferred maintenance and research, because those are two areas… that we have no direct control over.”

Beckham continued to say that the main way to help with this is not through SGA’s direct involvement, but by working with Topeka.

Mclemore countered Beckham by saying that his party has already been working with a variety of groups in doing this and would not be controlling deferred maintenance, but cooperating with others to resolve the issue.

Where Mclemore focused more on broad improvements to campus, Beckham focused on supporting campus groups and partly by polling them to best represent their views.

“What I haven’t seen this year is a single survey asking students about what issues are important to them or how they react to student government taking any kind of action on a certain issue,” Beckham said.

Mclemore had issue with Beckham’s reliance on surveys, saying that the time taken to get a survey prepared, sent out and then analyzed would leave little time to act on their results.

Beckham disagreed and said that the surveys could be carried out through electronic means to increase the speed of sending them out and analyzing them.

After the presidential debate, a vice presidential debate was held between Brianna Kitchings, the candidate for Students Unite, and Casey Donnell, the candidate for SURV.

Both candidates cited their lengthy experience in parliamentary procedure as strong reasons for their electability for vice president, but had differing views of how the SGA office should be run.

Their biggest difference was on how to ensure senators fufill their one hour weekly service obligation.

“One of my goals would be to have a board up in the SGA office that has a list of tasks,” Kitchings said. “That way when one senator has time they can come in and look and say, ‘Oh here’s what we need to do, I’ll get this done.’”

Donnell believed that this was too much of a top-down like approach for SGA. “The easiest way to get someone to do something is not to tell them, it’s to kill them with kindness.”

In the open forum portion of the debate, the audience members asked candidates various questions. 

Vice President of Student Life Wade Robinson asked the two most challenging questions, with only yes/no only answers accepted.

The first question was whether or not to allow faculty and staff who have conceal and carry permits to bring their guns onto campus. All the candidates were hesitant to answer, with Beckham answering that he personally supports and Mclemore agreeing.

The second question was whether students’ fees should be raised to help build improvements for campus. Mclemore said he would not support an increase but Beckham said he would only support it if students would.