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BY JACK KEEFE

In print | Published April 17, 2008

Vying to take the mantle of soon-to-be former Student Council president Peter Gardner ’08, Paul Apollo ’09; Yongjun Heo ’09; and, communicating over Skype from Spain, Randall Johnston ’09 gathered with students in Kohlberg last evening to discuss their qualifications and ideas for the presidency. Apollo and Johnston have both served on Student Council before (as student groups advisor and campus life representative, respectively), whereas Heo is a (potential) newcomer to student government.

“We’re all here to make Swarthmore better. If we disagree in different petty ways, we’re all here for our love of Swarthmore … our love for Swarthmore is founded on things like Quaker ideals and consensus, so I hope tonight we can get close to something like that,” Johnston said in her opening speech.

The long-term future of the college played a continual role in the night’s discussions. Both Apollo and Johnston directly addressed the possibility of having some version of a “one card” system in Swarthmore’s future (to get into dorms or rooms, to do laundry, etc.), which Apollo admitted would be “very expensive.”

However, Apollo stressed that the cards would be useful not only for reasons of convenience, but for safety as well. “It’s more than being able to see your friends in dorms … what happens if you’re being followed? Wouldn’t you like to be able to go into a dorm?” Apollo said. “I know it sounds like fearmongering, but it’s a very important point in considering this.”

One of Heo’s primary platform ideas that he stressed throughout the night was that the president should gather a list of specific requests from each organization on campus at the beginning of the year and “prioritize” them for Student Council to address. He stressed a unity between the organizations at Swarthmore, wishing for “all organizational leaders to have a group meeting … [every] two or three months.”

Candidates frequently invoked the 2020 campaign in their debate rheotirc “Next year, we’re going to be deciding on a capital campaign, we’re going to be deciding on spending several hundred million dollars,” Apollo said during his opening speech.

However, the candidates appeared to have some disagreements as to the relevance of 2020. After Apollo referenced financial aid issues he would like to see addressed in the 2020 campaign (need-blind international admissions, lowered summer expected contribution) as part of a financial aid question, Heo discounted that sentiment to focus on “immediate” things.

Later, Heo repeated this opinion. “Obviously, the bigger goals, the bigger issues are for the 2020 campaign … the goals that I’ve listed, I think are completely feasible. The only thing stopping me from doing that is myself,” he said.

A question asked by Anson Stewart ‘10 as to the greatest difficulties the former council members had when acclimating to their position touched on sensitive issues of diversity at the college. “The most difficult part for me was learning about racial issues. I come from Maine, the whitest state in the union … my school had three minority students and they were all adopted Koreans,” Apollo replied. He referred to valuing the anti-oppression workshops that student council attended as being useful, and being frustrated about the "passive marginalization and racism that I can’t actually detect."

“I think I’ve done everything I can to learn about that,” he said.

Heo, while expressing positive remarks as to the anti-oppression workshops, nevertheless believed that they “weren’t enough.” “In terms of racial issues … having two workshops when there [weren’t] workshops before is a step in the right direction, but these dialogues can’t stop and shouldn’t stop when [the workshop] is over,” Heo said. “Two days is not enough to undo 18 years of racism that I’ve encountered in southern Indiana. Two days isn’t enough.”

On a number of points, the candidates’ concerns plainly converged. All three, for example, expressed that there would need to be a vocal debate as to the potential commercialization of the Swarthmore Inn project in response to a question from current student life representative Alyssa Work ‘08. Johnston emphasized the idea of keeping the hotel component “in the family,” to not let it be taken over by a major hotel corporations. "We’re students and socially conscious, so we don’t know what sort of bad business practices of ungreen business practices that they may have," Johnston said.

Candidates did seek to differentiate themselves in response to a question from an unidentified student who asked what made each candidate different from the other. Apollo cited his “experience with student government,” “practical skills and the relationships with the administration [useful to] bring my agenda and through me the agenda of Student Council to the highest level.” In his answer, Heo referred to Pemon, a health organization he founded. He cited both his founding of the organization and his engagement with the IC community (through SAO and the Tri-Co Institute) as contributing to his uniqueness as a candidate.

Some tensions emerged in the discussion when Johnston described her position on Student Council as “a little different” from Paul’s due to its inherent “leadership,” David German ‘08 asked why Apollo’s position was not one of leadership.

“Please do not allow me to insinuate such a thing! … To be able to work as a team is the most important thing,” Johnston said in reply, continuing to describe Apollo’s position as having a “very specific role” with groups and the budget, whereas her position had a “more broad, less defined role like the president and vice-president.”

Apollo replied to this assertion, saying that, “On top of [chairing the charter committee], everything that Student Council is doing I was a part of … people on Student Council aren’t limited to their specific jobs. While my job was [technical], I was the leader on a committee and worked intimately with people trying to get charters.”

Attendees were also attuned to questions of candidates’ executive skills and styles. Apollo said that “this semester on student council I’ve developed a taste for getting what I push for,” mentioning that he had recently had a meeting with Alumni relations to get $2,000 to help offset the cost of the Halcyon.

In contrast, Randall identified as a “conciliatory person.” “I’m not going to blaze through the rest of student council’s … ideals to get to my own,” she said.

In that same vein, Tom Emmons ’08 asked what the candidates would do in terms of “filtering student input” and taking into account the pragmatic value of student suggestions.

“I’ve been on SBC for almost two years, so I’m very used to having students ask me to do things that I just can’t do … I would compromise, even if I couldn’t fulfill their goals, I would take Swarthmore in the direction of those goals,” Apollo said in response. Heo said that he would need to work the ideas in a way so that the “finances wouldn’t restrict [them]” and that he would “work with the community we already have.”

“Every single idealistic comment you get isn’t going to be realized because they’re in different directions … we can talk with the administration about how to realize such goals on a smaller level or to look at things in a different way,” Johnston said.

For those who missed the forum but are still interested in hearing the candidates answer the Swarthmore community’s questions, an additional Student Council presidential candidate forum will be held in the ICC big roomat 6:00 p.m on Friday.

Online voting for the election begins April 19 and continues to April 22, while paper voting will take place in Sharples on April 23 and 24.

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