Three of the five candidates vying for next year’s A.S. presidency took advantage of the large crowd gathered for Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) campaign rally to tout their positions and slates.
The contenders addressed a collecting audience, which at its peak reached an estimated 2,300, approximately an hour before the senator’s appearance. The idea was proposed by the Kerry campaign, according to current A.S. President Jeremy Paul Gallagher.
Harish Nandagopal, running on the Students First! slate, and Jeremy Cogan, running on the Unity slate both, likened their policy stances to those of Kerry.
“Much like Senator Kerry, who has committed himself to the lives of Americans, I’ve made a decision a few weeks ago to represent 20,000 undergraduate UCSD students as well as my community,” said Cogan, a John Muir College junior and current A.S. commissioner of enterprise operations.
He urged students to vote, both in the campus and in the national presidential elections.
“For UCSD, for our generation, continue exercising our voice, unify for your rights [and] don’t let our concerns be silenced or quieted,” Cogan said.
Nandagopal praised the Students First! ideology, saying it represented everything the national candidates needed to mount a successful presidential campaign.
“We are a progressive slate, unapologizing progressives, and we’re damn proud of it. This is the time that liberals and progressives unite and take over the White House,” Nandagopal said.
Pae attempted to dispel the idea that UCSD students are apathetic.
“People say students are apathetic, but it was really encouraging to see so many people out there in support or just coming out and making a statement, making it visible that students care about the issues,” said Revelle College senior Jenn Pae, an independent presidential candidate. “I’m just really fortunate and glad to be a part of it.”
In her speech, Pae, who currently serves as vice president internal, stressed her autonomy and lack of slate identification. She said she is running on “values of honesty and sincerity.
“In the last four years, I have had many [leadership] experiences, so I know what the students want [and] I know what the students need,” she said to the crowd.
However, Kris Saradpon and Steve York, the two other independent candidates, say that they were never offered an opportunity to participate, contending that they never received the invitation.
York suggested that the two have been singled out because they are not running on established slates and do not currently serve on the A.S. Council.
“Certainly this is a travesty,” York, a John Muir College junior, said. “The point of a whole-campus election is equal time for all candidates, no matter what their stance, no matter what their experience.”
Though Saradpon believes the one-day period given to the candidates for confirming their attendance at the rally was unreasonable, the Muir junior admitted that he may have erroneously erased the e-mail.
“I could’ve just mistaken it for spam mail, and not thought about it,” he said.
York maintains that he never received the message.
“I received no e-mail, and I checked my deleted e-mail, saved e-mail and spam e-mail,” he said. York went on to say that he might ask election officials for an investigation.
A copy of the message, provided by Pae, listed the addresses of all five candidates as the recipients, with “John Kerry at UCSD-Opportunity to Speak” in the subject line.
Kerry staffer Beth Leonard, who was listed as the author, confirmed distributing an e-mail, though she said she was not authorized to verify its content or to whom she sent it.
However, Gallagher said he provided the campaign with contact information for all of the candidates. Under the circumstances, A.S. Elections Manager Tom Chapman dismissed York’s suggestion that the event unfairly favored certain candidates and may have violated election bylaws.
“We provide equal opportunities for every candidate, but if they choose not to take it, we cannot force them to do that,” Chapman said. “Like most things, if they choose not to respond, with equal notification, they choose not to respond.”
