Editor’s Note: The interview with Amrando Parrish, running for Student Government President,t and Ben Guerriero, running for Student Government Vice President, took place on Wednesday, February 25th. The Texas Horn contacted the 6 other student government alliances for an interview; however, some alliances rejected our request, and others did not respond. This interview was edited for clarity.
Luke: Alright, first question is pretty simple: why are you guys running for student government President and Vice President?
Armando: I’m from Dallas, and I came from a relatively small high school with 253 kids in my graduating class. Then I came to UT, where my graduating class is about 11,000 students. Freshman year, I lived in Castillian, and even though I knew people, I didn’t feel like there was any real community. But over the course of my first year, leading into the beginning of the sophomore year, with the help of professors and friends like Ben, I started to build a community. This community made me feel right at home, and has made me want to give back to UT.
Ben: Both my parents went to UT, and when I was 5, my Dad passed away. So I grew up with my mom, and she would always talk about how my dad wanted me to come to UT and make an impact. I think that experience is really the foundation of why I wanted to come to UT and run this campaign, because I want to make a long-lasting impact on this campus.
I also came from a relatively small high school; my graduating class had only 100 kids, and coming to UT was a bit challenging because of the size, which was a bit overwhelming. But the community here has really made me feel at home, and the ability to give back to all the people who have made my UT experience so great would be very rewarding.
We genuinely love UT, and unlike other candidates in this race, we’re not on the pre-law path; we’re both in the business school. I think that distinguishes us and shows that we’re really just running to make UT a better place.
Luke: The second question I had was how you would approach your position as student government president and vice president differently from the current office holders? So what would you do differently from the current administration?
Ben: One thing that I would like to do is really amp up student government and make it more transparent. One of our goals is to meet with every single student organization on campus. There are 1,176, so if we meet with 4 a night during the school year, we can meet with all orgs. I think that’s what differentiates us from the current office holders as well as other candidates in the race. I think it’s so easy to get into the office and just depend on the policies to solve everything. We really want to be active, meet with other students, and show them that the student government cares. And that’s what we are trying to do right now by walking up and down Speedway, and if we get elected, that’s what we’ll continue to do.
I think the most important thing is that, like you can pass policies, but if you never actually interact with the students, they’re probably not going to care as much. And that’s something we’re really intent on just going out and meeting with people in these orgs.
Armando: Yeah, I think Hudson and Thierry ran on the platform that the UT student government is a very underutilized tool, and that is true, and they have definitely made it much more known, as seen by the competition this year. But something we would do differently is to amplify student resources here at UT. And we don’t want people to know about these resources just through an email blast, but personally, individually, make sure each student knows about these resources. Whether that ranges from Vicks’ career center to the CMHC. We really want everyone to know about these resources. We are absolutely willing to go classroom to classroom and have student government representatives talk to students about these resources and show people that we actually care about students.
Luke: So ya’ll have talked about making UT a more integrated community and expanding awareness about student resources. What are your top five policy proposals that you think you’d implement,t and why specifically do you think these policies should be implemented?
Armando: I would say the number one policy that is super near and dear to my heart is the freshman forgiveness program. Ben and I believe very strongly that your college experience should not be defined by one bad grade. So what we’re proposing is that you can retake one major-specific lower-level class in your freshman year. If you retake that class and you do better, it will replace the old grade on your transcript.
A lot of other schools already do this, like UTD, UT El Paso, Texas Tech, Georgia Tech, and at MIT, your first semester of freshman year, your grades don’t even count. So, there is definitely an argument to be made that if we do this, T14 medical school admissions would be increased, T14 law school admissions would be increased, and graduate school admissions across the board would be increased.
Another policy that is also very important to us is having one true dead week. We think that during dead week, there should not be any more assignments or exams, so you have more time to study and prepare for finals.
Ben: I think a really important one for me is that UT should have a full-on remembrance ceremony for students who passed away during the year. Right now, what we do is we ring the bell for every student who has passed. I feel like we need to show a little more respect and just do what is right. So we want to organize a full-on remembrance ceremony that would be on the lawn, and people could bring chairs, and have a webinar where people can watch at home with their families. I think that will bring the community together, too, because at that point it’s bigger than politics or academics; it’s really about bringing the community together.
Another thing that we want to do is make it easier for students to get connected with organizations. Coming into UT and during orientation, I didn’t know anyone, and I feel like a great way for people to get to know each other is through orgs. So what we’re proposing is creating a survey with questions that ask students about their personal, career, and academic interests and putting them in the canvas modules that you do during orientation, because there is so much filler time during orientation. And based on students’ responses, they will be able to see their top 10 organizations they should apply to on HornsLink. I feel like this will help people get connected to student organizations a lot quicker and make the search process a bit easier.
The last thing is addressing mental health. This is a big thing nowadays because there has been so much pressure on students. So, what we would do is create a climate report of what students are struggling with. We really want the mental health professional to look at this report and come to different classes across campus and increase awareness about mental health facilities on campus. That way,y by having face-to-face interaction, students may be more inclined to seek out these mental health resources.
Luke: Like you guys are probably aware, the University of Texas has seen sweeping changes this school year with the appointment of Jim Davis as President. If elected, how do you plan on working with a more conservative University President and administration while also catering to the needs of a very diverse and mostly liberal student body?
Armando: I think the best way to approach this is by listening to the needs of the majority, but also catering to the needs of the minority. Definitely, some of the things Jim Davis has done across the university have been seen as controversial. I would say our solution would be that the first month in office, we would assess the political landscape of what’s going on from behind the scenes, and then gather information during that time and figure out what the next step is. Neither Ben nor I is in the student government. I applied and actually got rejected. So I would say taking that first month, honestly, the first few weeks, and just really seeing what it’s like behind the scenes, in the background.
Ben: Yeah, I think there are some ideas that aren’t really promoted. One way to solve this is to invite students to open forums. We don’t want it to be packed with people throwing insults or whatever because there are different perspectives and backgrounds, but we want to consider all of them in a mature fashion. We want it to be something that has a certain process where you submit an opinion on a form. Hopefully, we can get people like Jim Davis and other high officials to be there. But that’s why we don’t just let everyone in, because that would be unproductive. So having an actual system that will allow people to come in and discuss the ideas and come to the microphone and do it in a mature manner, because obviously freedom of speech is a big deal in Texas, and we need to utilize it more. This, I think, is the most productive way of assessing it. And we’ll be sitting in those forums to see what people are saying.
Luke: So would these open forums be more for a contentious policy that’s up for debate? For example, with the consolidation of some of the COLA departments, would you guys have advised Jim Davis to have a public forum on that before the University decided to follow through with this policy?
Ben: Of course, there are so many contentious topics going on in the world right now, so I think we really want these forums to be structured where students could discuss topics going on both inside and outside of UT. We would also probably send an agenda to people about topics that would be open for discussion during the forum. Things like the consolidation of COLA departments and executive agencies, and stuff would be on there. We just want these forums to be as orderly as possible because it is so easy for an environment like that to get out of hand.
Luke: I guess another follow-up to that with the open forums, then would they be subverting student government representatives and the senate of college councils? These bodies have frequent meetings where they discuss and debate a lot of these topics. How would these forums work in conjunction with the work being done by student government reps and the Senate of College Councils?
Ben: I mean, that’s a good point because we definitely do not want to place them. And I’m glad that we’re focusing on this because this is something that we actually want to address. And the way that we want to prevent this is obviously, we want to invite anyone who wants to come in and watch. Obviously, we know that student government and senate officials are busy, but also, at every student government meeting or senate meeting, you’re not going to invite these students who otherwise would be coming to the forum. It would also be unproductive if there’s overlap. So we would really like for Jim Davis and other administration officials to be there, even if it’s an hour a month, because we think it would make a big difference. Obviously, we would want to do more than that and make a big difference, but at the startat least, we just want a place where students can voice their concerns, and we can relay that information back to student government officials and senate officials as well. I think it would be unproductive if students came to talk in front of other students because,, at the end of the day, Jim Davis and other university officials have the final say, so I think that would be the most productive way to do it.
Luke: Just to comment on that, I think that student government representatives and the Senate of College Councils are there as a sort of filter for a lot of these ideas.
Ben: Yeah exactly, I think that’s why some people are missing out because it’s so easy to say “yeah we’re going to pass your idea on to Jim Davis” but you can’t do that with 50,000 students, so I think the best thing to do is eliminate the middle man, but keep us there to moderate and facilitate the discussion of ideas.
Luke: So let’s say you’re elected and at the end of next year, what would it look like for your presidency and vice presidency to be a success? How would you measure that?
Armando: I mean, practically getting all of our policies passed. We started with 36 policies, and then we’re like, actually, these are not that great. So we took them down to 19 because we’re like, okay,y we believe these 19 are actually quality and thorough, and we can truly afford to get these passed. So I’d say practically on one side, that’s what it would look like for success, getting those policies passed.
Ben: Yeah, just something to add on to that, if you come into this and you know you say you want to implement 60 policies next year, that’s unrealistic. That’s like what 6 every month? Let’s be real. So what we really want to do is get all of these 19 policies implemented with no fillers. And on top of that, too, like what we were saying before, going to every org and implementing these forums and really heightening communication are very big goals for us.
I think we’re very fortunate running in this election, specifically because of how popular it is. I think the voting turnout is probably going to be over 4% this year, just a prediction based on the competition we’re facing. I think this will be good for the school, as it will get a lot of people engaged, and we want to keep that same momentum going with making actual significant change when we get elected.
