Editor:

I was shocked by Kevin Hsu’s letter in the April 1 edition of the Guardian. I found Hsu’s claims to be completely unfounded and, most importantly, riddled with fallacies. It seems as if Hsu must have some personal vendetta against Jeremy Cogan to go out of his way to publicly bash him in an effort to persuade voters to cast their votes for some other candidate, particularly one associated with the Students First! slate.

Jeremy Cogan has proven himself to be a worthy candidate for A.S. Council president by his years of public service, his ability to actually get results that benefit students and his candid care for the students of UCSD. Cogan is a candidate who I believe will actually stand for something useful when in office. He believes in unity across the entire campus, which includes all students, organizations and colleges. Cogan is one of the few people to actually keep a strong tie to his college while maintaining his current role as the A.S. commissioner of enterprise operations.

Jeremy Cogan has done an immense amount of work to execute the A.S. ropes course, to improve Soft Reserves and Lecture Notes and to create the Online Bookswap. Furthermore, Cogan has succeeded in implementing the dining dollars program at the Grove Caffe, which many who have held the office previously have unsuccessfully attempted. All of these actions directly affect students, which in my mind, is putting students first.

It is obvious that where others fail, Jeremy Cogan has the ability to succeed. Whether students want to believe it or not, this has a lot to do with experience. I do not believe that Cogan or the Unity slate stands for bureaucracy, as there are candidates on the slate who have not held formal positions within Associated Students or college councils. They stand for having experienced contenders on the slate who want to make a difference for students through unity, and that experience comes from all different kinds of campus organizations. Personally, I want the student who represents me to have knowledge about the office they hold, because this can only work to my advantage. It is obvious that the Associated Students can be quite bureaucratic, which proves an even greater need to have an experienced candidate occupy the role of president. Jeremy Cogan’s experience will allow him to stand up for students’ rights and desires in a more effective way because he knows how to actually accomplish things.

I hope that the readers of the Guardian and all students at UCSD choose to educate themselves about what each presidential candidate truly stands for and their prior actions; moreover, I hope that Hsu’s statement will not be taken at face-value because I believe it to be an opinion which is clearly clouded by personal grudges rather than a real concern for the students of UCSD.

— Megan Miller

John Muir College junior