Student Assembly presidential race

A summary of this year’s candidates for Student Assembly president:

Brian Martin ’06 is a brother of Psi Upsilon with an unabashedly pro-Greek stance. He claims he can free up over $20,000 of the Assembly’s budget, in part by cutting the inane Big Green Bikes program and similar monetary holes. He also has the advantage of being at odds with the current SA administration of Julia Hildreth ’05. As for his plans on the diversity affairs committee… Nevertheless, with the most defined candidacy of any of the five, and an apparent desire to cut useless programs, Martin is the best candidate to emerge thus far.

Todd Golden ’06, the current SA vice-president, has a few issues he’s running on, such as teaching CPR to undergraduates and distributing students’ rights cards (good) and support for Big Green Bikes (bad). However, he also appears to have a nasty penchant for wasting SA’s money.

Mats Lemberger ’06 is running a campaign based in part on his involvement with the annual Festival of Humanity, held Green Key weekend. Again, I haven’t seen a website or a poster that clearly defines his platform–let me know if there?s anything.

Paul Heintz ’06 is a brother at AD and is trying to fit into the pro-Greek insurgent candidate mold, a la Janos Marton ’04 (who, indeed, supports Heintz). However, other than the fact that he’s not happy with SA and that he’s “fighting for students” (per his campaign poster), I haven’t seen much in the way of concrete details (though please comment if I’ve missed something). The former president of the Young Dems (and an avid Deaniac), he also is the author of this charming article on campus politics.

Noah Riner ’06, the vice-president for the 2003-2004 academic year, is by all accounts a very nice person, though his campaign manager, Jim Baehr ’05, has some strange things to say about his candidate:

“I kept trying to encourage different female friends to run so I wouldn’t have to support Noah, but sadly he’s the best man for the job,” Baehr said.

Riner has hyped his involvement in crew, but I haven’t yet seen a defined platform.