After much deliberation, The Maneater Editorial Board is endorsing Tori Schafer and Riley de Leon for Missouri Students Association president and vice president.

However, we expected more from the MSA presidential and vice presidential slates this year. The three slates — Schafer and de Leon, Josh Stockton and Shruti Gulati, and Nathan Willett and Payton Englert — all had major shortcomings in their platforms.

During Shafer’s and de Leon’s political careers at MU, they have formed relationships with other student leaders and administrators that would assist them in their executive roles. The pair has the most combined experience in MSA of any slate. Schafer has also worked with the Associated Students of the University of Missouri, a group that lobbies the state legislature on behalf of students. Their time in student government means they’ve already laid the foundations and can begin building upon them more quickly and efficiently.

When their platform was first released, Schafer and de Leon’s plans were vague and presented in short bullet points that gave little indication of concrete plans. Since then, they have taken the time in interviews and debates to elaborate on their platform, proving that a lot of thought was put into those bullet points.

While their platform could have been more detailed, Schafer/de Leon is the only slate that includes concrete programs supporting LGBTQ students. Their transgender student endowment and STRIPES inclusivity plans seem like tangible ideas that can help to welcome students on campus.

Still, Schafer/de Leon and the two other slates let students down in some major areas. For example, race was not specifically mentioned on any of the three platforms. While inclusivity is a frequently found theme, no slate took an explicit stance on racism on this campus.

All six candidates were students here during the protests of fall 2015, and they should know that racism didn’t end with the resignation of former UM System President Tim Wolfe. MSA is supposed to be the voice of the students. If the president and vice president cannot make a clear statement to support students of color, they are not representing the voice of all students.

All slates also inappropriately handled a question at the second debate about how to include the voices of students who are too busy working to support themselves to take part in MSA. All slates, instead of giving a concrete answer about reaching out to those students, claimed that because the candidates themselves also had other jobs, students should also be able to make time to be involved. Just because these candidates take on multiple responsibilities does not mean other students should be expected to do the same.

All three slates, whether in the debates or in their platforms, said they would use KCOU and MUTV to disseminate information about MSA. While KCOU and MUTV are MSA auxiliaries, the idea that those outlets are merely MSA mouthpieces is detrimental to the journalistic integrity of student media. KCOU and MUTV both work hard to do good journalism, and it is wrong for slates to assume they have the power to use them at will. This also speaks to a greater problem of MSA’s possessive attitude toward its auxiliaries, which are fully functional organizations in their own right.

There are several factors as to why Stockton/Gulati and Willett/Englert are not the right fit for MSA president and vice president. Stockton/Gulati’s platform was promising, but their debate performance was unimpressive. Stockton showed a fundamental lack of understanding of MSA and its auxiliaries. For instance, he misunderstood how safe-ride program STRIPES works, saying that students who want to get involved can pick up a three- or four-hour STRIPES shift at the end of the day. In reality, STRIPES has a specific interviewing and hiring process for drivers who volunteer for the semester.

The Stockton/Gulati campaign also misidentified existing sexual assault prevention programming twice, referring to the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center as the “Rape and Sexual Violence Prevention Center” and Green Dot as “Green Light.” While they said the mistakes were made by campaign staffers, this shows a failure on their part to ensure their campaign workers are educated. This stands at odds with their platform claim that they will help educate student leaders in MSA.

Willett/Englert were also disappointing in debates, with Willett struggling to communicate effectively at the podium. Clear communication is essential for an MSA president. If someone cannot speak to a room of people, it is hard to imagine them speaking to the entire student body, or, more importantly, speaking on their behalf. Willett’s stance supporting prison labor is also concerning, given the questionable ethics of the issue. Willett/Englert also attacked the It’s On Us sexual-assault-prevention campaign but was unable to provide any other plan of action to fight sexual assault on campus.

While The Maneater is endorsing Schafer/de Leon, we want to be clear that we expected more from this experienced slate. Schafer, as the current vice president, should have been able to provide a more detailed platform reflective of her institutional knowledge. However, these high expectations do not end with the election: If the slate is elected, we will continue to expect more. Stand up for your student body, stick to your promises, and work to be the elected representatives that every student at MU deserves.