On-campus residents need to look no farther than the incumbent candidates, President Chris Rucker and Vice President Caleb Krenning, when voting for the next Residence Halls Association president and vice president.
Rucker and Krenning are by far the best slate in the election. They have the most experience and presented the most well thought-out platform, with a large number of concrete, specific goals to accomplish. Both candidates have served as representatives since their freshman year. Krenning became chairman of the Campus Dining Services committee afterward and chairman of safety, while Rucker moved on to become a residence hall treasurer and then vice president before becoming president.
Their platform focused on providing services to students, such as an organized equipment rental system, free entertainment streaming and recycling bins in every residence hall room. Through student-use of the services, the slate hopes to increase awareness of RHA and retention of its members.
Throughout the RHA-sponsored debate and our editorial board’s meeting with the three slates, Rucker and Krenning gave direct, practical answers to each question and provided many tasks for improvement in areas such as sustainability and safety. Each task was given with a detailed plan for implementation, proving that Rucker and Krenning have done their research.
Rucker currently serves on a national board, which brings together university residence hall governments from around the nation. He was able to show that he’s examined free-streaming services at other schools and was able to logically explain why free laundry services would be unworkable.
Most importantly, Rucker and Krenning maintained that whether their proposed changes would be enacted hinges upon whether students actually want those changes.
The other two slates provided positive energy but lacked the experience, communication skills and know-how to be effective in RHA’s top two executive positions.
An organization’s president and vice president must be effective representatives who can easily speak with others. Zack Folk and Lindsay Weber, however, were unable to present themselves effectively. Perhaps the positive aspects of their platform, such as the idea to expand the safety walk, could have been more appreciated if they were well communicated. It often seemed as if the slate members did little but agree with Rucker and Krenning.
Weber, who currently serves as halls government coordinator, a position Rucker and Krenning created, would continue to make a quality executive board member. Folk might also be a good addition.
Gage Caszatt and Lydia Harvengt presented the weakest platform but had the most enthusiasm. The slate was a vibrant voice throughout the RHA-sponsored debate, but disappointingly, the voice gave vague, poetic answers instead of concrete, practical ones. Both candidates are freshmen and thus have the least experience of all the slates. Additionally, Harvengt consistently answered questions before Caszatt and gave better answers. They were running for the wrong positions, the candidates should have switched roles.
Caszatt and Lydia have potential, but they should come back next year with a little more experience and an actual platform.
Rucker and Krenning might be miles ahead of the other slates in this presidential race, but this gives them absolutely no excuse to slacken the pace if elected.
It’s no coincidence the other two slates both mentioned RHA’s visibility as a key feature of their platforms. Rucker and Krenning have not made significant improvement making RHA more visible to the campus during their tenure. That being said, Rucker and Krenning have improved relationships with other organizations such as the Missouri Students Association, and now have the contacts necessary to give RHA a voice in campus-wide discourse.
Our concern is that they have presented too many goals for it to be realistically possible to accomplish all of them. It would be great to have more drying racks, reusable take-out meal containers, an expanded bike-rental system, a sustainability coordinator for every hall, a database resource for residence halls, an RHA Presidential video-address and more RHA sponsored events, but Rucker and Krenning will stretch themselves thin trying to achieve all of those ideas and more, considering they already missed the deadline to submit a request to the Student Fee Capital Improvement Committee to get funding for their recycling bin idea.
Rucker and Krenning’s idea for a programming board, which would allow non-RHA elected residents to have an official say in the organization’s duties, is a great idea but would be better off set to the side. RHA is already struggling with member retention and the incumbent candidates have said themselves residents won’t join RHA for the long term but will use the organization’s services in the short term.
It’s great Rucker and Krenning hope to unite residents, but that does not mean Residential Life workers, who are a part of a separate entity, should have to make room in their busy schedules to attend monthly forums or social events.
In the end, Rucker and Krenning have the experience and know how necessary to put RHA into a better position as an effective student organization. President Rucker is not just a qualified RHA member, he is a real student leader who is capable of going above and beyond the call of duty, demonstrated by his thorough research and confident presentation. A vote for any other slate is a vote completely wasted.