Student hopefuls looking to be the next ASCC presidential and trustee candidates for the 2016-2017 school year plead their cases as to why students at large should trust them to be their voice.

On Monday, March, 28. BK-111 was home to the 2016 Presidential and Trustee Forum, which saw three presidential and vice presidential candidates as well as three trustee nominees.

Ballot No. 1 saw presidential hopeful Saul Lopez and his vice-presidential counterpart Enrique Rodriguez speaking of the importance of sustainability to their campaign.

Lopez stated, “I know the campus, I know the way to get things done, I understand the climate.”

Lopez credited his brother with introducing him to student government and opening a new world of leadership to him while Rodriguez spoke of his commitment to attend senate meetings with current ASCC president Eduardo de la Rosa where he eventually presented the Falcon Kids initiative.

Ballot No. 3 consisted of Joseph Fierro and Ryan Kang, who spoke on tackling safety and security, while write-in candidates Jacob Lirio and Enrique Rueda spoke of their leadership experience serving their communities and their commitment to help students.

“I am running out of frustration,” expressed Rueda.

“I want the library to be open longer, so students don’t have to rely on outside sources in order to pass their science classes because they are really time consuming,” he expressed mentioning police involvement while staying on campus till 2 a.m. studying with classmates.

Lirio spoke of a reward-based initiative for students.

“Creating a recognition initiative where we give incentives to hard-working students. Another thing I want to focus on is, I call it the higher education initiative.

Lirio continued this part of the forum describing a 2,000 student analysis that will help determine a consistency of problems and isolate and tackle the issue.

Lirio and Rueda served in the Navy and Army respectively, where Rueda learned how to deal with people and expressed this would be a useful skill to use if he were elected.

He labeled using the word “manipulation” in the debate a wrong choice of words when describing his skill set.

“By manipulation I meant that if you have a disagreement, I know how to be able to make sure you agree with me, whatever word that is, I realize manipulation is the negative side.”

He noted that convince was a better form to describe his skill.

Fierro expressed his delight to be running and debating with the candidates.

“As far as being worthy of being president, I think we’re all worthy.”

He listed his pass/no pass initiative, which he presented at ASCC Senate, as one of his biggest accomplishments and reinstated his commitment to represent students.

Fierro’s vice presidential counterpart Kang and Rodriguez both agreed on having smoking designated areas on campus.

Rodriguez stated, “I just feel like, I don’t know which gentleman it was, it is not fair for us to be able to breathe all that stuff. There have been times when I have been walking behind somebody and like a chain cloud of smoke and it smells weird.

“I started doing my research and it is propylene glycol, which is a byproduct of oil, petroleum, so I’m inhaling that. As far as us students that don’t [smoke] I don’t think that we should be inhaling that.”

Rodriguez was referring to Kang’s comments about non-smoking students not consenting to inhale smoke coming from students who smoke on campus, thus advocating for smoke designated locations.

Notably absent from the forum was ballot No. 2, presidential candidate Hugo Gonzalez and his running mate Victor Gutierrez.

On the student trustee front, ballot No. 1 consisted of Karen Patron, the current faculty senate liaison, who would like to open a multicultural center and is an advocate for the increase of courses.

“I would like to increase student resources, because of the population were going to need more library hours, tutoring hours, books, etc. Also, we need to be more aware of our environment, therefore I will promote sustainability,” Patron noted during the debate.

Ballot No. 4 saw Gloria Sedano, who would like to provide students with academic resources such as calculators for underprivileged students taking math classes.

“From being in student government I was able to see where students need more representation and where we could actually help improve the conditions of the student body,” Sedano expressed.

She stated that she reached out to professors from different divisions to see what it is that can be done as student leaders to help benefit the conditions for students.

Alex Cervantes campaigned as ballot No. 5, mentioned easier access to counselors among his trustee goals.

“I was the chair of the STEAM Committee, and something I heavily advocated for was the increase of tutoring hours.

“While I’ve been here for a while I have also gone to other schools and [had] the chance to see what they have and what we have, I compared and I can see some of the stuff that they have that we can get to help us be more successful, Cervantes concluded.

ASCC elections will take place on Wednesday, April 6 and Thursday, April 7.