To see video of the debate, click here.
While Your Party SGA presidential candidate Steve Glickman and STARE candidate Natalia Cuadra-Saez spent much of Friday’s Diamondback-sponsored debate defending their platforms, SKY Party candidate Andrew Steinberg focused his energies on attacking the Glickman administration.
Seated between Glickman and Steinberg, Cuadra-Saez seemed to be literally caught in the crossfire of the pair’s own debate: While she stuck primarily to discussing STARE’s goals, Steinberg listed criticism after criticism of Student Government Association President Glickman, who was left to defend what he called a successful year.
“It may have been one of the best experiences for Steve, but it’s been horrible for students,” Steinberg said in his opening remarks. “He’s allowed the organization to humiliate themselves.”
After each candidate answered questions from The Diamondback editorial board before an audience mostly made up of their party members, they sparred face-to-face, asking one question of each of the other candidates.
Glickman asked Steinberg, who serves on the SGA executive board, why he’d neglected to bring up the issues he spent much of the debate highlighting during his tenure as a vice president of finance.
“I have a lot of responsibilities,” Steinberg answered. “Because I was spending more time on that, it was hard for me to pick up for the gaps you left in your administration this year.”
For Steinberg and Glickman, the debate marked a change in tone from the way they have been running their campaigns: Although Steinberg had previously declined to mention Glickman by name when referencing this year’s SGA’s shortcomings, Steinberg chose repeatedly to open his statements with direct references to what he described as Glickman’s failures.
In his first question to his opponents, Steinberg asked Glickman why students should believe anything he says, given that he “didn’t accomplish one thing” this year.
Glickman defended his achievements — despite unfinished campaign promises such combining student IDs with SmarTrip cards and eliminating Saturday final exams — pointing out that while his larger initiatives are inherently long-term, he’d kept his word on goals such as hosting the first-ever Multicultural Expo and an off-campus safety walk.
“The weather’s good, too — you’re gonna claim credit for that?” Steinberg said before proceeding to ask Cuadra-Saez why she thought Glickman should not be president.
Cuadra-Saez, who refused to engage the question, used her two minutes to advocate for STARE instead.
When the editorial board asked what Glickman’s biggest disappointment was, he said it was his failed relationship with Steinberg.
“I wish we were able to work together this year … but unfortunately a relationship is a two-way street, and it didn’t come back the other way.”
Cuadra-Saez challenged Glickman to describe not just the ways in which he’d continue his progress as this year’s president, but what changes he would make.
Glickman said he would look at changing the bylaws and structure of the SGA to make student government more conducive to regular student input and participation.
“Last year, the bylaws were changed so that it made it difficult for students to come in and have a say,” he said. “We pretty much kicked the average student out of SGA.”
When Glickman asked Cuadra-Saez, the SGA’s North Hill legislator, to account for her accomplishments and relevant experience prior to this semester, she described her participation in university student groups — in particular, her activism during STARE’s demands for transparency, diversity and a student say after Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity Cordell Black’s dismissal from that position last semester.
“I would continue doing that in SGA, just at a higher level,” she said.
Elections will begin tomorrow at 8 a.m. and end Wednesday at 7 p.m.
aisaacs@umdbk.com
