Recently elected members of CU’s Student Government’s Excel ticket are looking forward to making some changes after a sweeping victory.
Brooks Kanski, a 20-year-old junior economics and neuroscience double major, and a member of the Excel ticket, said he thinks his ticket won the election because of their experience.
“We are highly experienced in CUSG,” Kanski said. “We understand the processes and systems of CUSG, and we proved that by the results of our elections.”
Demi DeLoach, a 20-year-old junior majoring in political science and peace and conflicts studies, also a member of the Refresh ticket, said she too thinks that Excel’s experience was why they won the election.
“I feel that our ticket did not have the experience that the Excel ticket had,” DeLoach said. “I listened to students talk about the elections and I also read comments from off the Internet and students were saying the same thing, ‘Excel has more experience in CUSG.’ I personally feel that Excel triumphed because of that fact.”
Kanski said that the first thing he would like to tackle in CUSG is working with the Finance Board to find inefficiencies in cost centers and to correct them.
“With Amendment 102 stating we need 25 percent of the student body to approve a student fee increase of more than 1.0 percent,” he said. “I want to work closer with the Finance Board in finding our cost centers’ inefficiencies, and converting those into usable dollars where more funding is needed.”
Kanski said the best way to go about achieving this goal is to maintain close relationships with the Finance Board.
Goering said he would like to focus on keeping student fees manageable.
“While in office I would really like to find the most efficient use of student fees so that we can keep them manageable,” Goering said. “With large tuition increases coming up, money is going to be stretched for students and their families as it is, so I feel that it is our job as elected student leaders to do everything we can to control costs to the students as much as possible.”
Goering said he would also like to increase awareness of CUSG to students.
“There are many benefits, like funding for new student groups that CUSG provides,” Goering said. “But I feel like many students are unaware of what their leaders can do for them and don’t take advantage of some benefits.”
He said that increasing awareness would probably increase voter turnout because more students would better understand CUSG.
“I think a better understanding of CUSG would also lead to higher voter turnouts and more participation in student government,” he said.
There has been discussion among some students regarding the Excel ticket since the election, much concerning its affiliation with Greek life.
Goering said the notion that the entire Excel ticket is Greek is false.
“The notion that Excel is an entirely Greek ticket is a misconception and is not true,” he said. “While we do have members in the Greek community, we are by no means an exclusively Greek ticket.”
Kanski said that out of the 10 students on the Excel ticket, only four are involved in Greek life.
DeLoach said she thinks the misconception is funny because both tickets have students involved in the Greek community.
“I find this question to be funny because it brought up a lot of discussion, and I feel that people were misinformed,” she said. “Both tickets had Greek candidates, however the type of Greeks represented were different.”
She said that while the Greek representation was different for each ticket, she does not believe it impacted the results of the election.
“Refresh has three Latina women who are apart of a multicultural Greek and as far as I know Excel had three candidates that were from traditional Greek organization,” she said. “Traditional Greeks dominate over multicultural Greeks at CU and that is a fact. However, that does not bother me in the least. Greek life does not determine who wins or lose.”
Regardless of student debate over the ticket’s involvement in Greek life, Kanski said that the Excel ticket is very balanced.
“We are a very balanced ticket,” Kanski said. “What matters is we were elected by the student body and we now know we have their support.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Lindsay Wilcocks at Lindsay.wilcocks@colorado.edu.
