THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2011
WWW.KANSAN.COM
VOLUME 123 ISSUE 129
PASSION AND DRIVE
Competing for your votes
Passion for results drives KUnited candidates
ANGELIQUE MCNAUGHTON amcnaughton@kansan.com
With Student Senate, Libby Johnson saw results.
From the moment she joined Student Senate as a University of Kansas freshman, she was hooked.
"It was just a ton of really exciting stuff going on and I loved the stuff that we got to make an influence in," said Johnson, a senior from Lawrence majoring in biology and psychology.
That passion for results continues to motivate her four years later.
Johnson, a brunette, walks into her interview with The Kansan in the Kansas Union wearing knee-high brown boots and jeans.
As soon as she removes her coat, she reveals a red KUnited T-shirt and a KUnited coalition button signifying her allegiance.
Johnson is the presidential candidate for the Student Senate coalition KUnited.
"As student body president I will be able to put things in place that will really make the college experience the best it possibly can be," Johnson said. "And so far this has been the most memorable experience for me."
Bliss, a sophomore from Olathe.
One level up and a day later, clad in a blue hooded sweatshirt and jeans, stood her running mate and vice presidential candidate, Gabe Bliss.
SEE KUNITED ON PAGE 7A
STUDENT SENATE DEBATE
Renew KU candidates seek to help Senate fulfill potential
BY ALEX GARRISON agarrison@kansan.com
Casey Briner gets choked up.
It may be the result of long hours she's working, the emotional stress of putting in hours of meetings, hitting the campaign trail on top of keeping up with her pre-law and anthropology coursework, going days with little sleep. It's enough to wear any student down.
But what it is, she says, is that she's touched by the passion, commitment and diversity of the students she's working with on the Renew KU ticket — "the morale is higher than I've ever seen it," she said, referring to the Renew KU slate, which she's at the top of as candidate for student body president.
She believes in Student Senate. She says it's not fulfilling its full potential to help students under the KUNited incumbency, a long run in the president and vice-president spots by the coalition she ran with to get into Senate in a replacement seat last year. Too few students outside the system vote or are involved, she says. She wants to change that.
"We want to hold the system to the highest regard," she said.
aid the system to the highest regard," she said.
"We want students to come to us and we'll help them, we have avenues to change things — we can go to the administration, to the student rights committee."
Josh Dean, Briner's running mate, echoes their core idea of wanting to strengthen student representation.
"it's about bringing students back to Student Senate" he said.
Briner and Dean both say the proof of their commitment to this is the idea that their run is not about themselves. In interviews with The Kansan also attended by their campaign manager, Justin Hitt, a junior from Shawnee, they're frank about the low student turnout in elections, general apathy in the student
SEE RENEW KU ON PAGE 7A
The Kansan is hosting a debate between the presidential and vice presidential candidates at 9 tonight in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union. Students can email questions for the candidates to editor@kansan. com. Please write "DEBATE" in the subject line and include your name, maior and year in school.
STUDENT SENATE
Student coalitions examine on-campus dining options
Students dine at The Underground. Both Student Senate coalitions, KUnited and Renew KU, have plans to expand on-campus dining options.
Mike Gunnoe/KANSAN FILE PHOTO
BY ROSHNI OOMMEN roommen@kansan.com
As part of its effort to increase student involvement in campus decisions, the KUnited coalition is including a campus dining option as part of its platforms.
The campus dining platform is student body president candidate Libby Johnson and vice president candidate Gabe Bliss's effort to allow students to choose which restaurants and dining options they'd like to see on campus, a system they call "choose what you eat."
"It's really important that students get that input," Bliss, a sophomore from Oathe, said. "This gives them the ability to tweak what they want to see in the dining options on campus, and puts them in partnership with KU Dining."
Together, the board would evaluate what campus dining is like, what could be improved and what students would like to see.
"Basically, students would be able to pick what they want to eat on campus," Johnson said. "Whether it's Quizno's, Chipotle or a local business, then they would have that option."
Johnson, a senior from Lawrence, said that this platform would start the creation of a KU Dining board, which would involve the KU Dining administration, the All Scholarship Hall Council, the Association of University Residence Halls and representatives from the student body.
Because KU Dining has administration throughout campus, Johnson and Bliss said that KU Dining board would be able to have input about the dining experience in different areas on campus, including in the dorms, in the Underground and in the KU Memorial Unions.
Johnson said the coalition spoke with representatives of KU Dining to see if the platform was a plausible option that could make an effect on student involvement in dining decisions. She said the response from KU Dining was positive.
"The key part is that students would be in the decision making process," Johnson said.
Edited by Amanda Sorell
INDEX
Classifieds ... 11A
Crossword ... 4A
Cryptquips ... 4A
Opinion ... 5A
Sports ... 12A
Sudoku ... 4A
Forecasts by KU students. For a complete detailed forecast for the week, see page 2A.
All contents, unless stated otherwise, © 2011 The University Daily Kansan
WEATHER
TODAY
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Mostly Sunny
Weather balloon gathers data
CAMPUS | 3A
Geography students launched a weather balloon to take hundreds of aerial photos.
New recruit joins Kansas basketball
Three-star power forward Braeden Anderson committed to Kansas Sunday morning.
This campus dining platform is student body president Casey Briner and vice president candidate Josh Dean's effort to make the Kansas Union a more central campus hub Even though the Kansas Union is farther from most campus buildings than the
Underground Dean, a sophomore from Overland Park, said he believed that introducing new restaurants in the building would make a significant change in the number of students who would choose to dine at the Union.
"For the platform to really work, we need something that the students overwhelmingly want. Food is a powerful motivator."
In an effort to decrease traffic in the Underground, the Renew KU coalition included a movement for stronger dining options in the Kansas Union.
JOSH DEAN Vice presidential candidate
BY ROSHNI OOMMEN roommen@kansan.com
He said that in order to receive a restaurant license for each new restaurant, the Union corporation would have to pay proceeds in excess of 11 percent of sales. He
"For the platform to really work, we need something that the students overwhelmly want," Dean said. "Food is a powerful motivator."
So far, Briner, a junior from Flower Mound, Texas, and Dean said they were in the process of determining which restaurants they would like in the Union. The two said they had received feedback from a couple of hundred students through casual conversations and brainstorming, but that they hadn't heard from enough students to decide which restaurants would be present in the building.
Briner said the new restaurants
Mucci said that although into ducing new restaurants to the Kansas Union is possible, there was no real way to tell if it would make the area more popular or successful.
"I don't think it's an unreasonable question to be raised by Renew KU," Mucci said.
would be similarly themed to the current restaurants that are in the Union. The two talked to David Mucci, director of the KU Memorial Unions corporation.
said that was hard to tell if the volume of sales would increase enough to compensate this overhead.
Briner and Dean said they hope that students who had more time would be willing to travel to Union as a result of introducing new restaurants to the Union. They also hope that new restaurants in the Union will decrease the congestion that often occurs in the Underground.
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According to Briner and Dean, the money to finance any change would come from the Memorial Unions corporations board budget, which would arrange contracts with the chosen restaurants.
"There's just not a clear and obvious solution."
The change would take place in the 2012 school year, Dean said.
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