SGA candidates answer questions at an elections board-sponsored debate on the last day of campaigning.

SGA presidential candidates and their executive board running mates defended their platforms for two hours last night at the SGA-sponsored debate, in which divisions were visible but attacks were minimal.

Candidates adopted a different tone than at the Diamondback-sponsored debate last Friday, where tensions flared between Your Party candidate and incumbent Steve Glickman and SKY Party candidate Andrew Steinberg. Although the crowd frequently booed, snapped or clapped in response to candidates’ remarks, the parties did not interact, instead fielding questions from the elections board, Student Government Association officials who are not seeking re-election and students in the audience at the Stamp Student Union.

As the candidates addressed issues such as fostering campus community, establishing relationships with student groups,improving the student group funding allocation process, budget cuts, transparency, diversity and interacting with a new university president, they were split definitively along party lines.

In addressing how to deal with inevitable budget cuts and departmental mergers, the SKY Party and Your Party candidates for vice president of academic affairs focused on maintaining and improving existing relationships with administrators, whereas the STARE coalition kept with their theme of student empowerment as a solution.

“The first step a dean needs to take when deciding where to cut from is to have a public meeting,” said STARE coalition candidate Bob Hayes, who is running for vice president of academic affairs.

SKY Party candidate Ian Winchester and Your Party candidate Lisa Crisalli said the first step should be engaging administrators, not students.

“I want to have a great relationship with [Provost Nariman Farvardin],” Winchester said. “I think it’s important that that happens.”

And in terms of representing student concerns to university, system and state officials on issues such as tuition increases, the same divisions surfaced.

Glickman cited leveraging his existing relationships with state representatives as the key to success in supporting the Higher Education Investment Fund.

“We were able to help maintain quality in our education in a tough budget time,” he said.

Steinberg also vouched for establishing relationships with both administrators and state government officials, adding that establishing relationships with students is also essential to lobbying on their behalf.

But Cuadra-Saez focused on the “power of organizing,” a philosophy that STARE has emphasized throughout the academic year.

“As president, you’re only one voice, and it’s important to take very bold stances, but it’s also important to energize others to take a stance with you,” she said.

The subject on which all three parties seemed to agree was in identifying the SGA’s biggest flaw: the organization’s inaccessibility.

“We can write as many resolutions as we want … but it’s not going to matter if students don’t actually care,” Steinberg said. “We have to become more student-friendly … simply by talking to students.”

Even as an SGA legislator, Cuadra-Saez said she has felt shut out by the procedure-oriented meetings that can go on for hours.

“A lot of times I felt like my spirit was squashed,” she said. “I want to see passionate people in the SGA.”

And Glickman said the current SGA bylaws preclude the average student from participating.

“We cut the student out of SGA, and those are the people we want to hear from,” he said.

Polls will be open on Testudo today 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and will re-open tomorrow from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. Public polling stations will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the lobby of Stamp Student Union on both days.

aisaacs@umdbk.com