Editorial: The Pitt News endorses an SGB candidate

Every year, students confront seemingly unsolvable problems: tuition hikes, transportation… Every year, students confront seemingly unsolvable problems: tuition hikes, transportation deficiencies, etc. But today, anyone who signs onto my.pitt.edu has an opportunity to alter the course of Pitt history by voting in the Student Government Board election.

If you didn’t experience a swell of civic pride reading the preceding lines, you’re probably not alone. Only 19 percent of students voted in last year’s election, and only 12 percent in the election before that. Few on campus seem to know — or care — about SGB; at best, the Board is generally recognized as the overseer of club finances.

But whether or not people realize it, SGB’s influence extends beyond student organizations. We wouldn’t enjoy free access to The New York Times and USA Today, for instance, if it weren’t for previous President Charlie Shull and current President Molly Stieber. At the very least, students should familiarize themselves with the two current presidential candidates, John Hasley and James Landreneau, before dismissing today’s election as inconsequential.

Hasley, a senior history and philosophy major, has campaigned on three main initiatives: sending Board members to club meetings to ensure both parties understand each other, reforming the New York Times/USA Today readership program so that the papers are only available to non-College of General Studies undergraduate students who paid for them and moving Board members’ office hours to public spaces like Litchfield Towers Lobby.

Landreneau, a senior chemical engineering major with a certificate in nuclear energy, also emphasizes three initiatives: assigning each Board member a series of clubs to contact on a regular basis, mostly to clarify why allocations decisions were made; establishing monthly Pitt hall sessions during which attendants could ask Board members questions; and creating an on-campus Student Leader Summit.

Earlier this week, we met individually with both Hasley and Landreneau to discuss their proposals and, more broadly, their reasons for running. Now, after deliberating amongst ourselves, we’ve decided which candidate to endorse.

That candidate is James Landreneau.

We’re skeptical that Landreneau’s Pitt hall sessions will attract large crowds — as mentioned, most students couldn’t care less about SGB — but we do think his Leader Summit is a surefire way to bolster campus-wide camaraderie. We also commend Landreneau’s proposal, mentioned during our meeting and Tuesday night’s debate, to ease the transition from one allocations committee to the next — in part by changing the allocations manual each year to accommodate changing voting precedents.

We’re also impressed with Landreneau’s track record as a Board member. This year, Landreneau oversaw the installation of an easy-to-use swipe-in entrance system at Towers, a feature that will soon spread to all residence halls. And during the summer, he helped renovate the OCC program — an overhaul that, although not without its flaws, was still indisputably a step in the right direction.

This isn’t to say Hasley doesn’t also have important accomplishments to his name, among them the implementation of a Blackboard smartphone app. But we remain unconvinced that his initiatives would amount to anything truly significant.

We also find Hasley’s attendance record at SGB meetings troubling — right now, the candidate has five absences while Landreneau has two, according to Stieber. When his absences were mentioned during our interview, Hasley said he would only miss a meeting as president under dire circumstances, whereas now, although he assured us there was no way he could have avoided the absences, he was “just another Board member.” We hardly think that’s an adequate rationalization.

Ultimately, however, today’s election presents a choice between two strong presidential candidates. Whether or not you agree with our endorsement, exercise your right to make a difference just this once: Head to my.pitt.edu and vote.