Candidate for Director of Programming

What is your platform?

“So, essentially, I’m running for Director of Programming and, first and foremost, a lot of people don’t know it’s a representative position. A lot of people think that it’s just concerts and stuff, and it’s not. It has a lot to do with representing the student body and USG decisions and legislations, so I really want people to know that. We always talk about why they rate the artists and performances that come here and my biggest platform is to actually follow through with that. You know, representing different types of genres that students listen to on this campus, different types of entertainment they want to see, like comedians. I know we teased that last year, and we were unable to follow through on that. I also want to bring a little bit of transparency and let people know what the process is like. I am currently on the board, so I know how it goes.”

Why should people vote for you?

The biggest thing is this: I’m on the board, like I just said, and I’ve seen what’s not working. I feel like if I’m not given this opportunity, history will just repeat itself and those issues will not be fixed. But I have the qualifications, I have the connections out in L.A. and I feel like I’ve heard so much from students that want to benefit them and finally have their voices be heard.”

What changes are you looking to enact?

“I do want to bring comedians back. We haven’t had one since my freshman year of college with Amy Schumer. A lot of people have complained about the fact that our university does have to pay for concerts, so I would like to look into how we can either cheapen it or make it less of a cost for the students; maybe make it free. That’s a hard thing to do ‘cause that does involve adding on payment to tuition. Some of the other changes: like I said, the music, is the same every year. It feels like we haven’t really had many differences of genres or artists that represent different types of communities around here. And then our biggest event – or not big, but it’s one of my favorite events – was TEDx. We just had that two weekends ago and we sold out plus 50 extra seats. And last year was the first TEDx we ever did and I believe the biggest inaugural sale for a TEDx on a university campus. And I want to expand upon that and make it even bigger. Maybe make it a weekend thing where you can go see multiple people. Say like, there’s no speaker you don’t really care to listen to then someone else you wanna go see, you can go to different buildings, kind of like a convention almost where they have panels.”