By Joshua Robison / The Jambar

A public debate was held between Student Government Association presidential candidates Andrew Cvetkovic and Justin Tucker, and executive vice president candidates Shahed Abbadi and Mo Riaz at 11 a.m. March 18 in Silvestri Hall for the upcoming election.

The candidates discussed prominent issues for students on campus, such as outreach, support for students and student organizations and difficulties faced with Kilcawley Center renovations.

The first topic of discussion was the effects of the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act, previously known as Senate Bill 1, on students. Tucker, junior chemistry major, said that with the changes, as president, he plans to support organizations and promote events.

“We’re really focusing on supporting struggling majors, primarily by SB1,” Tucker said. “We want to try and reach out to [struggling majors] and promote their organizations and promote their events.” 

Riaz, junior mechanical engineering and biology major, Tucker’s running mate, continued this sentiment by talking about creating a stronger sense of community on campus. Riaz said they can create that better sense by focusing on organizations receiving less funding. 

“We are going to attack the root causes for struggling organizations, the ones who are not getting funded [or] the ones who get little funding,” Riaz said. 

The debate turned to Cvetkovic, junior business economics and philosophy major, and Abbadi, junior political science major, who discussed academic transparency, a continuation of the focus from current president Sofia Myers and Executive Vice President Carter Cook.

Cvetkovic said that issues with grade input into Blackboard leads to students not knowing their standing.

“A lot of faculty on campus struggle to put their grades information into Blackboard. A lot of students are not fully understanding what their grades are,” Cvetkovic said. 

He had also said acting as a communicator between students and faculty is one of the main functions of the president. 

“It’s our job as the communicator between both the student and the faculty to help let students know where they are on campus, let them know their positions [and] let them know how they can be better helped by faculty,” Cvetkovic said. 

Afterwards, Abbadi discussed plans to expand amenity awareness among students for campus services, such as the Career Closet and Penguin Pantry.

“One of our initiatives are to increase awareness and accessibility of all the services we offer here at YSU,” Abbadi said. “We know that YSU offers a great amount of services such as the Career Closet … We’d like to find a way to spread awareness about [YSU services] and allow students to reach out to these services.” 

Polls for the elections of SGA president and executive vice president opened April 1 and will close at 5 p.m. today. Voting is available online and in person at Moser Hall, Ward Beecher Hall, Meshel Hall, Williamson Hall, DeBartolo Hall and Beeghly Hall.

Results of the election are expected to be released by 5 p.m. April 3.