Engineering Senate candidates answered questions from students they hope to represent at Thursday’s debate.
About 70 engineering students asked about communication, funding and representation among other departments to better gauge who to vote for Feb. 20 and 21. Benton Engineering Council, a student organization in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, hosted the debate. This was the first debate in five years the council has hosted.
Representatives from each political party spoke to students about their policies and values for three minutes, then two engineering candidates from each party had one minute to answer students’ questions.
Impact Party engineering candidate Anthony Temeliescu said students voiced their concerns about their ability to talk with their senators.
“It’s hard to get out to office hours with the burden of the schoolwork,” Temeliescu said. “I think oftentimes that ends up leading to engineering students not feeling engaged.”
Amy Emerson, a Challenge Party engineering candidate, said students mentioned concerns about a lack of funding.
Emerson said a lot of engineering teams, like Solar Gators, have to ask companies for parts because they can’t pay for them themselves.
“I wasn’t expecting those questions, but I know it’s important,” Emerson said.
Inspire Party engineering candidate Gantt Meredith said the senators representing the college could fix communication problems with an electronic mailing list.
“It seems like the engineering communication pipeline is very clogged right now,” Meredith said. “That Listserv will be a way for everyone to be as transparent as possible.”
Contact Christina Morales at cmorales@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter at @Christina_M18.
