Debate Highlights

Well, the debate between the presidential tickets is over, and the biggest surprise of the night was that the ground was covered in snow when I left the Union. While all of the candidates carried themselves well, they mostly stuck to information from their platforms when answering questions. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since their platforms encompass what they plan to do and hope to achieve during their time in office. But since they didn’t stray too far from this information throughout the night, I felt that the debate lacked any flair that made candidates stick out. No one ticket really separated itself from the others in a major way or came across as the clear “winner” of tonight’s debate. This may be due to the format of the debate itself. It was more a moderated forum than an actual debate. Because of this, none of the tickets got the opportunity to directly demonstrate how they differentiate themselves from the other tickets. 

One thing that this debate did allow the candidates to show us was how comfortable they are speaking in front of groups. The president and vice president serve as the face and voice of the student body. To successfully accomplish this objective, public speaking skills are absolutely critical. While none of the candidates had poor public speaking skills, I really feel that Kyle established himself as the best speaker in the group. This is likely due to his experience as president of Student Admissions Ambassadors. While Kyle seemed natural up on the stage, Brendan seemed less engaged during the debate, and Kyle would often step in to elaborate on Brendan’s comments. Jordan and KaLeigh both seemed very comfortable speaking in front of a large group as well. Trevor and Beth impressed me by being the only candidates to stand up while speaking. This gave them a bit of an edge that seemed to keep the audience’s attention on them. Trevor did not have any problems speaking, but he seemed to take a back seat multiple times during the debate and let his sister do the majority of the talking. 

The opening remarks section of the debate seemed slightly awkward, as none of the candidates spoke on their platforms or what they hope to accomplish in office. They merely told us a little about who they are and what they were involved with on campus. The real opening comments came in response to the first question asked by the moderators. The question was “What are three things you think should be available to every student at UNI, and how will you make sure students have access to it?” This gave us a chance to hear from the candidates what they found important and what they would do for the student body if elected, although the answers all seemed very vague and similar to the other tickets answers. A question from current Student Body President Spencer Walrath about how candidates planned to work with senate allowed Jordan and KaLeigh to stick out by showing their familiarity with senate operations. This is also where Kyle first mentioned collaboration through communication, which became a common saying from him for the rest of the debate. As the debate moved into questions from the audience, there were very few questions that provided us with opportunity for the candidates to speak on anything new. Most of their responses came straight from information in their platforms.

The closing comments section of the debate was a very important portion of the debate because it let the candidates leave us with something to remember them by. Kyle did a great job of hitting on the points he made about the three things that he felt students should have access to. This allowed him to establish a theme for his ticket and let us know what he hopes to do for the student body. It was also good to hear him say they even though he and Brendan are both athletes, they are students first. This helped to alleviate some of the worries that have been expressed about their time constraints from participating in track. Jordan made some good comments about what he would do for the student body, and KaLeigh did a great job of closing their thoughts by bringing up the feasibility and realism of their platform. She also encouraged everyone to be as informed as possible before voting. 

While tonight’s debate did not have a clear winner, it allowed us to become more familiar with the candidates and their platforms. It was really nice to have all three tickets in the same place at the same time. For more detailed information on tonight’s debate check out Chris Miller's live blogging of the debate. I encourage everyone to learn as much as possible about the candidates and their platforms and keep checking in with us for campaign coverage.