One thing I have learned over the last three months while serving as Editor-In-Chief is that managerial skills are important. Whether it be managing a newspaper staff, a small business, or political positions, people skills are essential in order to be a successful leader. As you probably know if you are around campus, ASSU elections are next Thursday and Friday. In this issue of The Review, we have (in addition to our regular news coverage) a list of those candidates that we think are ready to lead as ASSU Executives and Senators.
One point we want to emphasize is that these endorsements were not made out of concern for polarizing political issues. To this day, there still is an unfortunate myth on campus that The
Review is some form of international conservative political conspiracy. Rather than focus on national political issues that distract from good governance, we want candidates that take the approach that they are servants for the Stanford student body as a whole. Candidates should strive to bring students a good return on their investments in Stanford University. We feel that Stanford-centric candidates, rather than those that are looking out for special interests ,are most likely to confront the mounting challenges that our student body will face in the coming years.
In evaluating candidates, we looked for two main qualities: leadership potential and good
sense with finances. On the subject of leadership potential, we came to the decision to endorse the Bennett Hauser and Matt Sprague slate for Executive because they each have demonstrated a clear-cut ability to
manage large groups of people and that they are able to successfully guard our money. As General Manager of the Stanford Student Store, Hauser has generated over $200,000 in profits for the student body over the past two years. As the Director of Stanford Capital Group, Sprague manages the finances of over 400 student groups. He is also the guardian of over $10 million in assets and manages 15 student employees.
With budget cuts continuing to shape the ASSU landscape, we feel that Hauser’s and Sprague’s demonstrated abilities in finance and business put them in a position to best look out for the interests
of Stanford University. Moreover, their combined managerial experience indicates that they will be able to confront the challenges in dealing with large Stanford bureaucracies—something they must do in order to
successfully improve student governance.
In the Senate, just as in the Executive slate, we did not base our decisions on national political outlook. Just as we have criticized candidates for being too political in the past, we did not feel it was appropriate to endorse along party lines (not to mention that we would quickly run out of candidates). Nevertheless, there are ample fiscal conservatives running—we feel that type of conservatism is most relevant for the ASSU. We seek senators that wish to improve student relations with the Administration, and increase the power of the student voice.
Moreover, the Senate must be able to improve effectiveness with respect to the delegates it appoints to university committees. With student concerns in mind, we decided to endorse ten candidates for Senate. Their responses to our interviews are included in the pages 6-7. While we endorsed ten students, fifteen will be selected to the Senate. For additional candidates, I would recommend looking at those students in the “Students for a Better Stanford” coalition on the ballot form.*
We do represent a minority on campus—but we also have demonstrated in the past that
our high turnout has swayed elections in our favor. With that in mind, I quote the late Mayor
Richard J. Daley of Chicago who said, “vote early and vote often.”
Brian O’Connell
*CORRECTION: In the print version I erroneously stated that Luukas Ilves was involved in the selection process of the Students for a Better Stanford coalition. The selections were not made by the senator.