After a long week of campaigning, Tsikata Apenyo had just woken up from a nap when he heard the news that he and Brandon Rivera were headed for the runoff election for ASUP president and vice president this week.
Polling almost six points ahead of their competing candidates, juniors Krizchelle Magtoto and Anthony Ng, the sophomores were expecting a win.
“I think you have to go into everything expecting to win, otherwise there’s no point,” Apenyo said. “Obviously we were hoping we would just win outright, but we were very close to that goal.”
ASUP election rules require a runoff election if neither ticket receives a majority of the vote (over 50 percent). Since Rivera and Apenyo only received 44.7 percent of the vote, Magtoto and Ng now have a chance to extend their campaign while Rivera and Apenyo work to keep their momentum.
The four candidates are running on fundamentally different platforms. Rivera and Apenyo hone in on specific goals for next year, parking and food, while Magtoto and Ng focus on broader, long-term goals, transparency, health and sustainability.
“We try to have a campaign that encompasses what everyone wants to see in a better school and in a better UP instead of just two main issues,” Ng said. “We want to be broad and appealing to everyone.”
Rivera and Apenyo see broad goals as an easy opportunity for ASUP to get nothing done.
Apenyo said that the pair chose a specific platform because they were tired of watching previous presidential candidates not live up to their promises.
“We’re running on a platform where, if we don’t deliver, it’s going to be very obvious and they can hold us accountable for that,” Apenyo said. “We want to see real, tangible change here on campus.”
Rivera and Apenyo’s “food and parking” campaign has elicited excitement and suspicion among the student body. Rivera said that while many people have questioned whether the team’s goal of food carts, shuttle buses and Lyft rides can actually happen, he and Apenyo talked to all the appropriate people before they decided to run.
The pair said they have met with the general manager of Lyft Portland, Kaleb Miller, who expressed interest in giving UP students and faculty members discounts on rides. They also met with Public Safety who, according to Apenyo, “love the idea” of providing a shuttle bus for students who want to park in the River Campus parking lot.
The most contested aspect of Rivera and Apenyo’s platform, however, is their promise of bringing food carts into the academic quad.
Rivera said that part of their campaign is providing visuals for the student body of the change they can make happen. This is why, last Friday, the pair campaigned in the UP food cart.
“I heard a rumor that CPB said we can’t do that,” Apenyo said. “But we were literally in a food cart campaigning on Friday.”
ASUP passed zero resolutions this school year. Next year’s candidates differ not only in their platforms, but in their view of ASUP’s challenging year.
Ng feels he has a unique perspective, as the junior was recently elected interim ASUP president after Khalid Osman resigned in February.
Ng recognizes that students are frustrated, but he encourages the student body not to pass judgement on Senate’s internal issues this year.
“I don’t think we should critique and say, ‘Oh, they never passed any resolutions so they weren’t doing anything,’” Ng said. “We’ve recognized that ASUP has not been functioning correctly for the past couple years and we wanted to fix that. I think that that is more than enough for this year’s Senate.”
Rivera and Apenyo, who have been senators for the past two years, said that this year on Senate has been frustrating because they’ve seen very little get done.
Rivera said that working in ASUP this year has been an up-and-down roller coaster ride with “a lot of down.” Apenyo chalks the chaos up to conflicts within leadership.
“There was really a lot of fighting within the Executive Board early on,” Apenyo said. “And once that starts happening, it kind of trickles down and affects the whole Senate and nothing gets done.”
Both sets of candidates stress that internal conflict will not be a problem next year.
Rivera and Apenyo have been roommates since freshman year. Apenyo argues that because they know and like each other, “fighting is just not going to happen.”
Magtoto and Ng also stress their support for one another. Magtoto said that the pair ultimately has the same goal, which will allow them to be successful.
“I think we just have this similar vision that we want to make this university something that everyone can be proud of,” Magtoto said. “We want everyone to know that they’re included into this community that has so much to offer.”
The runoff election will begin tomorrow at 8 a.m. and run until Wednesday at 8 p.m. Rachel Rippetoe is a reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at rippetoe18@up.edu.
