Speech and Debate team hosts final SGA debate

The Speech and Debate team hosted the second and final Student Government Association presidential debate Monday night in the Muenster University Center pit lounge.

One day before the election began, the two executive teams of Teagan McNary and Josh Anderson, and Sadie Swier and Lucas Lund answered questions in front of more than 60 students.

Students submitted a total of 43 questions to the Speech and Debate team, of which eight were asked to the candidates.

Sophomore Megan Swets, secretary of the USD Speech and Debate team said the questions were selected before the debate started.

“We chose eight to 12 broadly-worded questions that maximize each team’s opportunity to address student concerns or provide useful comparisons between themselves and their opposition,” Swets said.

The candidates also answered questions from four students in the audience.

Former SGA senator Jack Seitz asked the candidates why students should care about SGA.

Presidential candidate McNary said that SGA is a bridge for students.

“I think SGA serves as a liaison between students and the faculty and administration,” she said. “I think when students have concerns and frustrations, they look for somewhere to channel those frustrations. I think SGA serves as that resource.”

Vice presidential candidate Lund said he isn’t sure that students are generally interested in SGA.

“To be honest, I don’t think many students will care about a majority of the legislation and the things we do during our administration,” Lund said. “Because sometimes they aren’t always that interesting. But SGA allows students to be empowered, to get funding for the amazing activities that they need.”

Sophomore Krisztian Fasi, a psychology major, was left unimpressed with the number of questions that were asked.

“It was productive in a sense that it’s great that people got to ask questions,” he said. “I was a little disappointed in that there was only four student question asked. I look forward to seeing who wins.”

Nikol Vias, a graduate student in the College of Arts and Sciences, said both teams were professional, but he’s leaning towards McNary and Anderson.

“Sadie and Lucas were professional in giving diplomatic answers,” he said. “Teagan and Josh were more truthful in their answers. They don’t look true politicians.”

Both teams thought the debate went well.

“It was very exciting to see the attendance of this debate versus the other debate,” Swier said. “Even just being able to see students get engaged walking by and seeing what was going on.”

Vice presidential candidate Anderson thought this debate helped his team say things they didn’t get the chance to the first time around.

“It was nice to address the questions left out at the last debate,” Anderson said. “I think we got a good amount of more questions answered from the students and addressed the concerns they had.”

While Lund thought the questions were good, he said he would’ve liked to answer more of them.

“I would’ve appreciated more time for questions from the students,” Lund said. “Both teams went through the questions pretty quickly and clearly there are concerned students in the audience and I felt that they should’ve been able to express those concerns and ask whatever questions they had. We had plenty of time.”

Both teams are looking forward to the election.

“It’ll be a stressful and exciting next two days,” Anderson said. “It’s crazy to think that we just announced (our candidacy) a little bit ago.”

“It’ll be interesting no matter what,” Swier said. “It’ll be exciting.”

Students can vote via the myUSD Portal. Voting closes on Wednesday at 5 p.m. The results will be announced later that night.