Candidates recount efforts as ASG voting ends today

By Nick Ngo

Today is the last day to vote for next year’s Associated Student Government president and vice president. Students can vote online from any computer by going to www.mhcc.edu/vote. The computer lab in the College Center will be open with voting pamphlets, the library has one computer available for online voting with voting pamphlets, and there are voting pamphlets in the computer lab, room 1451.

Putting up posters, going out and getting student responses, debating and traveling to other campuses, the candidates running for ASG president and vice president have put all their effort into their campaigns. Their dedication reflects how much they care for the school and their fellow students.

Known as the more proactive candidates, according to the other candidates, Senators Jay Sabin (presidential candidate) and Sean Robinson (vice presidential candidate) said their campaigns went well.

“I think the campaign itself went okay,” Sabin said, “but we had to deal with a lot of immature stuff.”

According to Sabin, someone wrote the word “sucks” on their poster. Robinson said, “I thought it was very amazing that happened. The person that did it immediately went and told us that he did it, and told us who paid him to do it. I found that very interesting.” Robinson said the problem was dealt quickly and civilly.

One of Sabin’s strategies was student interaction. During the fall and winter term, they went to ask students what the major problems are on campus. They collaborated with students to see what they thought was important and talked to the teachers to keep them involved.

“We went through all the avenues and we expressed to a lot of people,” Sabin said. “We presented our ideas to everyone.”

Sabin and Robinson were the first ones to put up all 75 posters, and they made sure they updated the posters frequently. Along with being the first ones to put up their posters, Sabin and Robinson were the only candidates that had posters in different languages. They posted posters that were in Spanish, Russian and English. Sabin said that they received a lot of positive responses from students with the Spanish posters. They were also the first to put up their banner as well.
“I wanted to be first with everything and I wanted them to react to what I was doing. We were more proactive I believe, and they were following with what we were doing,” Robinson said.

Another idea they came up with was a blog, robo-sabin-victory.blogspot.com. Here they posted their platforms, events happening within the student government and interacted with anybody that left them a comment. Robinson was mainly the one who maintained the blog.

Sabin and Robinson agreed that if they could change one thing about their campaign, it would be taking fewer classes during spring quarter. Sabin said they could have organized more time to talk to other classes. They had already talked to some to explain why it’s important to vote and to have a student president and vice president.
ASG Director of Communications Stephen Floyd (presidential candidate) said his and Brandon Van Bibber’s (vice presidential) campaign went well and received a lot of recognition.
People commented on their posters, especially the “Pedro Voted For Floyd and Van Bibber” posters. According to Senator Cody Bakken (vice presidential candidate), using pop culture was an ingenious idea because he and the other candidates did not use the idea.

Even though students thought their posters were funny, some wanted to see more serious posters. In response, they put up blue posters explaining what their stances are. Floyd said students started to understand what they were talking about. The posters caught students’ attention and made them ask them more questions.
Their strategy was to let the students know who they are, what their goals are for next year as well as show students they have experience. For example, Floyd lobbied in Salem as a member of The Advocate. He had the opportunity to see first-hand how much effort and time it takes to prepare.

Like their opponents, Floyd and Van Bibber accessed the Internet as well to voice their stances and get student reactions. They too created a blog, pedro-voted.blogspot.com. Floyd posted a message on the MHCC page of MySpace asking students about their opinion on school dances. Some of the responses they received were not too happy with the idea.
“A college needs to be a comfortable social environment as well, not the superficial kind you see in high school,” Floyd said. “Some place that provides a sense of community, a social link.”Floyd said there were no real problems during the campaign but it took more time than he expected.“Sabin and Robinson kept me on my toes,” Floyd said. “They were active campaigners and it wasn’t as simple as calling it good. You have to put up new posters and re-clarify your messages, and go out and visit the people.”Floyd planned to go to the off-campus buildings like Maywood, fisheries and athletics, “Places that often get forgotten about during campaigns because they’re considerably away from the campus,” Floyd said. “We have to keep those people in mind because they’re students too and they’re important too.”The candidates said they have seen little of Bakken’s campaign. What they didn’t know was that Bakken was forging his campaign at another location, the off-campus buildings at the Bruning Center and the Maywood campus.“The community of the community college,” Bakken said.While he was at the Maywood campus he talked to students who were doing homework in the computer lab and he said they were interested in the campaign. They asked him more questions about what the students did on the main campus and wanted to know what his platform was. According to Bakken, they asked him more questions about his campaign than the students did from the MHCC campus throughout his whole campaign.

Bakken always told them to look at all three candidates first, not just to take him on his word because he could be biased.“I would say there’s ‘these people, these people and me,’ I know what I’m about and this is what I’m about,” Bakken said. “I never said ‘vote for me,’ I always said ‘make sure to vote, and I hope you vote for me.’ Because it’s more important that they vote than who they vote for.”Bakken was able to get all his posters and banner up in time. Some of the other candidates said that the banner Bakken put up trumped the banner Sabin and Robinson put up.“He did have an excellent banner, a lot better than ours,” Robinson said smiling.
Another campaign strategy Bakken used was word of mouth. He would tell his friends about his campaign, and then they would pass it on to other students.
Bakken had one problem throughout the campaigning period: He was a solo player. Unlike the other candidates who had partners to split the work with, Bakken was left to do the work himself.  However, he said his mother helped him with some of the campaigning by driving him to the Bruning Center, saving him travel on the bus.
Last year 286 students voted, and as of Wednesday night 136 students voted. Initial results will be posted Monday, May 29 on the windows of the College Center, official results will be announced depending on the initial outcome.