Candidate Overview
With a litany of issues concerning students this past semester, Texas Tech's Student Government Association candidates are preparing their platforms to entice students to get out and vote.
With two candidates running for each executive branch position, issues such as the leisure pool fee increases, bus routes and building better student relations are top focal points for candidates.
Lee Bobbitt, a junior political sciences major from San Antonio, and Philip Pride, a senior Latin American and Iberian studies major from Alice, Texas, are vying for president and have two opposing outlooks on what is the key issue for the campaign and with the students of Tech.
Bobbitt said the most important issue is to keep the student body informed about the issues SGA is covering and to provide a voice for the student body to be heard by the administration.
Bobbitt said a president should be willing to take risks and make the student bodys' voice heard by the administration, which can be intimidating.
While Bobbitt wants to be the student voice, Pride said he believes the key issue for this election is to improve the academic standing of the university.
Pride said many projects including the leisure pool may make Tech look nicer but do not improve the university’s academic reputation.
While both may disagree on their cornerstone platform, each agrees that student involvement is pivotal to ensure the SGA is best serving the student audience, rather than succumbing to administration desires.
Candidates for internal vice president are James Baumgartner, a junior mechanical engineering major from San Antonio and Dailey Fuller, a double major in advertising and accounting from Wylie, Texas.
Baumgartner is currently the general clerk of SGA and chairman of the rules and administrations committee, which he said gives him an upper hand on his rival candidate.
"Next year, when I have to run the senate, I’ll already have all of that stuff down," Baumgartner said. "I can do it in my sleep basically."
Baumgartner said the internal vice president must ensure that legislation which passes is followed up on to ensure that it is successfully comes to fruition.
Fuller said that although he believes Baumgartner is a good candidate, his role as chairman of the rules and administrations committee has left senators who do not fulfill their duties has created a senate with system of accountability.
Fuller, who is a senator at large, passed a communications bill; which the winning candidate will oversee,would set up an incentive-based program to reward senators for doing exemplary work and punish those who do not fufill their responsibilities.
"I feel like if these senators who we don’t know who they are, if they are not doing their job, then we need to get someone else in," Fuller said.
Josh Frost, a sophomore political science/pre-law major from Austin, Texas and Austin Pennington junior finance major from Rockwall, Texas are the two candidates running for external vice president.
Frost, a current senator and a member of President's Select and a Delta Chi, said his involvement with Tech is what sets him apart from Pennington.
“I guess the big thing would be knowing just really what organizations want, what their needs are," Frost said. "I’ve spent a lot of time talking to them. I spent a lot of time even before the elections just hearing, and trying to stay involved as a senator."
Pennington, who is on the rules and administrations committee, said he hopes to be elected to better serve the students of Texas Tech.
“That’s probably one of the big issues that I can kinda see middle ground with about the students aren’t involved and don’t know as much about what is going on because everybody knows what the deal is with buses and parking," Pennington said. "Everybody knows there aren’t enough spaces and the buses don’t come fast enough.”
Elections will be held online February 26th and 27th through the SGA Web site, www.depts.ttu.edu/sga.com
Students also will have a chance to hear the candidates lay out their offical platform at the SGA debate being held today in the Student Union Building Matador Room.