After spending three days passing out fliers and campaigning across the campus, this year’s SGA presidential candidates clashed over how to best tackle the campus’ diversity issues in the first official debate of SGA election week.
In the second annual diversity debate, the Student Government Association candidates stressed the importance of collaborating with cultural groups, maintaining college affordability and student retention rates, but presented starkly different approaches to addressing these issues. While For Party candidate Jamil Scott said she plans to expand the diversity coalition she created this year within the SGA to ensure students of all backgrounds feel safe on the campus, Go Party candidate Samantha Zwerling said she hopes to change university policy to tackle wide-ranging diversity issues.
Scott’s diversity coalition, which she created as the SGA’s vice president of academic affairs, works with the Asian-American Student Union, the Black Student Union and the Latino Student Union. If elected, Scott said she would build upon the coalition’s work to identify and address minority issues – including retaining minority students – as well as make trips to local high schools to make the university seem more accessible to Prince George’s County students.
“Despite the economy, every student should be comfortable in this environment,” Scott said. “That’s what diversity is.”
Zwerling, however, said she plans to take a drastically different approach. As part of her initiative to expand the SGA and add 30 new internal positions, she said she would create a diversity committee, a tolerance officer and an equality officer within the organization that would advocate for gender-neutral bathrooms and minority retention, as well as create interfaith initiatives. She added the SGA would collaborate with cultural groups in lobbying state legislators on issues like college affordability.
“We as students are very unrepresented on a lot of things,” Zwerling said. “Uniting as one body to the administration is really important, which is something I don’t think the body has really been doing.”
Throughout the course of the debate, the candidates challenged each other’s plans.
Scott said one of her biggest priorities would be creating a resource list so all students can find a group where they feel welcome. But Zwerling questioned how effective this method would be in improving minority retention rates.
“I don’t think, realistically, the Student Government Association can change culture on an entire population,” Zwerling said. “What we can change are policies. Thinking we can change culture and how people feel is, I think, unrealistic.”
Scott, however, questioned Zwerling’s method of involving cultural groups in lobbying efforts for state legislators.
“I don’t see how diverse students are incorporated into the system by having them sign a petition,” Scott said.
During open questions, a member of the Go Party asked Scott why the word diversity was not in the For Party’s 10-point platform. Scott countered a clause describing the work of the diversity coalition was included in the platform.
Scott said in an interview after the debate the clause had been included in the original plan, but it was somehow deleted from the version that went up on the party’s website. The original document sent to The Diamondback included the clause.
A screenshot sent to The Diamondback by Zwerling showed the clause was not in the For Party plan’s website version at the time the question was raised. The clause has since been added to the website version.
“The question really threw me off guard,” Scott said. “It was a mistake that it was not included, and that was why I was so surprised.”
“I was talking to a member of a multicultural group earlier and she mentioned that she noticed diversity wasn’t in the For Party platform,” Zwerling said. “[Scott] says it was an oversight and I believed that since she has worked on it a lot, I just think that’s an extreme oversight on her part if it’s that important to her.”
The candidates pointed to their respective backgrounds in dealing with diversity issues. Zwerling emphasized her work with minority student activists as president of MaryPIRG, while Scott stressed her leadership in several cultural groups, including the Black Honors Caucus.
Zwerling noted Scott proposed similar solutions to diversity issues last year when she ran for vice president of academic affairs and asked why the changes she promised hadn’t already been made. Scott countered she had made tangible changes and would continue that work if elected.
“I ran last year and said I would work on textbook affordability. I did,” Scott said. “I ran last year and said I would work on diversity. I did. Saying I haven’t been true and accountable is a fallacy.”
The event was hosted by La Voz Latina, a monthly campus publication.
villanueva@umdbk.com
