Editor’s Note: The Daily Orange Editorial Board interviewed each presidential and vice presidential candidate pair in the running for the Student Association’s 60th session. In an effort to provide transparency in the Editorial Board’s endorsement decision, The D.O. has decided to publish the transcript of each interview.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: To start off, could you just sort of introduce yourselves for the board and give us a couple of key points for your platform?

Charlie Mastoloni: Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously, you know, I’m Charlie. I’m a junior at Syracuse, here. I’m a policy studies and political science major. And so the reason that I decided to run was I’ve been inside of Student Association and I’ve been outside the organization, too. I feel that I know how it works, what could be done better and improved. Going outside too, I’ve realized that, you know, quite honestly, the Student Association has, in my opinion, not done a good enough job of really trying to reach out to students and be an association rather than a government. And that’s the main point, the main moniker, above all else, of what our campaign is. We want to return the Student Association to its roots of being an association rather than a government. Because, you know, that’s what it’s supposed to do — empower student ideas. Because Syracuse has, you know, has a number of great ideas for students. So we want to word toward doing that. So our platform consists of four pillars: culture, community, diversity and safety. And under each of those, we have identified specific, tangible goals for what we want to do.

For culture, what we want to do is — the idea for culture we want to do is work with SUNY-ESF students to partner with them and empower their ideas to be more green. Because, we feel that ESF is a really, really great resource. And the Student Association, during my time, really didn’t partner enough with ESF to really work to make the campus greener. You know, to listen to their ideas that often times are forgotten. So we want to work with them more.

For community, what we want to do is that we want to empower student ideas through something like an innovation series, right. So it would be a friendly competition between students, you know, like how start-ups often have competitions like that. So we want to have friendly competitions through those fun, student ideas that would win and we want to work toward funding more arts and more entertainment. Student ideas do seek out competitions for that, sort of like “Syracuse’s Got Talent” or something like that, right. You know, I think we just have such a talented student body that something like that would be really good.

For diversity, what we want to do is first off, look specifically to the Chancellor’s recent review. He released a bunch of really good ideas as far as embracing ideas more to make the campus a more of an exclusive environment — inclusive environment. So we are going to look at those ideas and from there we are going to make a specific committee that is made up of people who are interested in that sort of thing. We don’t want just Student Association insiders on that. We want people who are students who are actually interested in making the campus more inclusive. We want students to bring in their ideas to the committee and we want to really empower those ideas.

And then, finally, for safety, you know, we feel bad because right now Syracuse has a lot of really good resources. I don’t know if any of you are aware — I wasn’t even aware until Jess and I met with the DPS Chief Maldonado — we actually found out there is a Blue Light app, you know, that students can download. It’s like a mobile Blue Light app that that you can download on your phone and anywhere on campus you walk you can dial DPS, you can dial Syracuse Police Department, it gives you options for that, too. Another really cool thing you can do with that app is that if you and a friend — if your friend says, “Hey, I am going to walk over to your dorm,” and you let your friend now and you press a button on that app and your location is with that friend. So you can see them walk over if it’s like 2 a.m. and then if they’re not there in like 20 minutes you can be like, “Hey, what’s up,” you know? Something like that.

But really for safety what we want to do is advertise more of the ideas that we have here on campus so that students know what resources to call when. That’s a really big issue — people don’t know whether to call DPS, SPD or, to be specific, health and mental services and we want to work for that. We want to work toward one of the student ideas that recently came out that you guys did a great article on was how potentially cameras off campus could help to make campus a more safe environment that’s absolutely something that we would love to look into doing and look into pursuing.

And the other really big thing that we want to do with safety is we want to look into creating a student ride service — kind of like other colleges in the nation — we’ve looked into this — have like, it’s almost like an Uber-type system, only it’s not. It’s like a safe rides program. I don’t know if any of your towns have a safe-rides program of something like that. The Student Association would like fund a safe rides thing like that and rather than like, wait for the New York state assembly to pass Uber, because we already know that state assembly will take God knows how long to pass certain sort of legislation, right, and we want to look into a specific safe-rides program that, you know, if off the models of what small towns and colleges like Arizona State are doing, colleges like Amherst (College), and all those who have instituted something that to help get students, because, you know, at night, often times students are not in the right state of mind, often times they feel unsafe. You know, if you’re walking really, really far off campus then you have a safe ride opportunity, that would be really, really good. So that’s the basis of our platform.

Jessica Brosofsky: And I’m Jessica. I’m running for vice president. I’m a junior policy studies and international relations major. I’m currently president of Kappa (Kappa Gamma) and I just removed myself from my formal to come talk to you guys about this. Charlie really covered a lot of the bases, but some of the things we’ve done so far is go down to VPA, their theater department. A lot of my good friends are in the drama program and a huge issue there is busing, food and funding for their shows. So we’re working on a bill to help fund one black box show per semester just to make sure they feel more included on campus because there really is a big disconnect between the hill and the (Nancy Cantor) Warehouse slash the stage. And personally, if I’m elected vice president I want to bring back Elect Her, that’s just a personal initiative of mine. It’s a women’s leadership academy. It’s a training program. It’s all day long, (Student Association) President Allie Curtis did it…so bringing that back to campus and making sure women on campus feel equipped to run leadership positions.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Quick follow-up on security. I mean, you talk about better advertising, resources and you see in every single bathroom on campus the resources, the numbers to call. When you start at SU, you’re given training to develop, put this number in your phone, things like that and clearing up whether its SPD or DPS. You know, the UACT, there is collaboration between SPD and DPS so let’s say you’re under alcohol intoxication and those are high — SPD then collaborate with DPS and DPS would respond. So, two parts: One, exactly how would you better advertise that and two, what conversation have you had with the university administration about collaboration between the city and SU.

Charlie Mastoloni: The main thing we would want to do first off is advertise the Blue Light app a lot more. Right now, only something like 3,000 students have downloaded the app which is a really small majority, I mean, minority compared to the 14,000 undergrads we have at Syracuse.

So I think making infographics like that, having students download the app going into school, have more infographics like readily available and have the Student Association push out the campaign constantly to remind people of what to call and who to call for specific situations, you know, mental health issues, sexual assault and things like that. So to really have the Student Association push more PR for that. And the second part of the question, in terms of talking to, bridging the gap between…

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: The city and SU and law enforcement.

Charlie Mastoloni: Yeah, yeah. So, one of the first people we had spoken to was DPS Chief Bobby Maldonado and he was someone who’s a really, really good resource on giving us information on specific areas they’re looking into targeting for specific instances. He is someone that we are definitely going to work with in the future if we are elected to figure out what else needs to be done, what they’re doing and what could be done better, you know?

And honestly, one thing that he told us too was that he feels right now that students don’t feel connected enough to DPS and SPD and I would agree with that. So something that he suggested and something that we want to do is create a permanent committee that serves as a voice that you are going to have DPS people sit on, students sit on and an SA representative sit on. So that’s going to keep constant communication to keep going forward and bringing ideas to better bridge the gap between students, DPS and SPD. So basically, because students need to be able to trust DPS and the trust needs to be two-ways, really. So we want to look into creating a committee that students really voice what they want from DPS and DPS can tell them what they’re doing for them so I think that in itself is going to create a better informed students body and I think a better fit DPS to better serve students.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Would you create a committee or would you reinstate the public safety committee that’s already a part of SA?

Charlie Mastoloni: We would look at both of them and figure out which one made the most sense because right now no permanent committee exists that has DPS sitting on it constantly that they’re meeting like monthly, something like that. We want to create something like that.

Jessica Brosofsky: I personally was on the Chancellor’s Board for Security and Safety on campus so that consisted of professors and the chief of DPS — Tony Callisto — at the time, myself and another student representative. But there weren’t enough student voices involved. We got a lot of work done, there was a whole report I can give you guys, if you want.

But I think the problem we had there was that there wasn’t enough average students — we were both SA representatives. And even thought Student Association is very important, we can’t know every single student’s opinion — that’s why were doing this, so we can start to learn more students’ opinions. I mean were going on this listening tour right now and trying to make sure that Student Association is more of an advocacy center — advocacy to the administration — rather than just governing and pretending that we know everything that’s happening, because we really don’t.

Charlie Mastoloni: Yeah, honestly, that’s the main part of our campaign and what we want to do different than a lot of Student Association governments so far, a lot of candidates so far, is we recognize that it’s impossible for us to know all of the different organization on campus. So one thing we want to do is create an RSO outreach committee that would essentially be there.

Jessica Brosofsky: So my freshman year, I worked under… who was at the time on the student engagement committee. She… that we created together the RSO liaison program that’s where every student association representatives in that committee would go and meet with different RSO presidents and vice presidents whoever we could. But instead what happened was, you know, you had one meeting and that’d be it and that’d be end of the connection. It wasn’t really well thought out at that time.

But now putting Student Association in every single major RSO organizations’ meetings, making sure someone is going at least once a week to those meetings since it is not really hard to pick up one extra meeting here and there. In Student Association, there’s plenty of us and 300 RSO organizations that do exist to make sure always that if not every week at least every other week to keep engaged and make sure that know what students are feeling and what they’re planning instead of promoting their events and helping in every way we can.

Charlie Mastoloni: Yeah, I mean, I really like … we were both in Student Association and know that members really don’t go to other RSO meetings.  They don’t reach out enough to students and listen to what student ideas are, you know. I mean they are elected to represent, you know, a large chunk of the student body. Not enough listening is really going on. You know, there’s a lot of technicalities going on within Student Association. There’s not enough listening going on and empowering student ideas so that’s really so that’s really the whole …  that’s really what we want to change going forward.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: You talk about Student Association not being government so I assume that you are against the SGA name change.

Charlie Mastoloni: Oh, absolutely!

Jessica Brosofsky: Except when I was a freshman, I was totally for it. I was like, “Oh my gosh everyone understand what SA does.”  But we had this huge debate and I remember “No, we don’t govern anything” and we do hand out money through comptroller and other than that we really didn’t have say and work with administrators to a certain extent that ever going to take anything like – you know what I mean? You can pass something, but if they decide that it doesn’t work for the university, there’s nothing that you can do to push it.

Charlie Mastoloni: … People, not everyone, but some people are just trying to validate Student Association validate what they do more about being a government for students. Like we’re a mini-version of the U.S. Congress. But in reality that’s not what it is. It’s not why it’s founded; it’s not why it exists. It is supposed to serve students’ interests and people’s liaison between the administration and students so that the administration can make better informed decisions that better fit what students want.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Both of you are in Greek life. How do you, I guess, associate with other members of the SU community other than those who are in Greek life? How does your campaign expand other than just, “I am going to have Greek friends vote for me.”

Jessica Brosofsky: I personally have always kept connections I’ve made after freshman year, the first semester before I joined Greek life. And I have always surrounded myself – most students in policy studies and international relations aren’t in Greek life. … To me, it really doesn’t matter. As president, I am also working with other people … making sure that I personally am meeting students and becoming friends and creating connections with students in other councils … I don’t hang out with just my sorority friends. In terms of voting, yeah, the Greek vote is going to be huge for us if we can get it because it is a lot of people if we can get it, but that’s not the only population on campus. So on our listening tour we made sure to point out big student groups that aren’t affiliated with Greek life with completely different visions of what the university is for them. Like going out to VPA and talking to students about the Stage.

Charlie Mastoloni: Yeah, going off of what Jess said, Greek life is a minority. It’s only 30 percent of the population. It’s small compared to the general student body and we recognize that. You know, we know that and we want to make sure because of that that we do that much more to reach out to these organizations. Greek life is not our no. 1 concern. Reaching out to different student organizations outside of Greek life is key to making sure that the Student Association is successful. It needs to be something that is all encompassing — something that no matter what organization you’re a part of, no matter what college you’re in — we recognize that. We reached out to a lot of different organizations outside Greek life. We are not basing out platform on Greek life.

Jessica Brosofsky: Speaking only if we are elected, we are listening to the concerns of the students who are in Greek life because there are issues there. But really, that’s not the main focus of my job. We are here to serve just regular students.

Charlie Mastoloni: The Student Association is for everyone and we recognize that.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: What are you plans in the case that you are not elected?

Jessica Brosofsky: Not elected? I still plan on joining the Student Association again. This year I took the year off because of the fact that I was elected president. And in everything I do, I want to give it 100 percent and I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the time commitment like I would have wanted to. And now I am going to go back up and try to be an assembly representative if I do not get this position.

Charlie Mastoloni: Absolutely. Going off of what Jessica said, I’m going to re-enter the Student Association. The only reason I left SA was because I went abroad to London for the semester and that in itself was a really, really good experience. And so I would enter SA again and look to, regardless of whoever wins, we would try to improve the Student Association.

Jessica Brosofsky: The campaign period has been pretty successful for us and I am good friends with Eric Evangelista. We’ve worked together since freshman year and we have said from day one that no matter who wins, we are friends and we are going to play nice throughout this entire thing. To us, it’s about serving the students. We are going to have good relationships once it comes out no matter who gets elected. We all agree that we have good ideas on everyone’s platforms.

Charlie Mastoloni: At the end of the day, we are doing this not because its something that is a title, we are doing this because we want to make an impact before we leave and we do want to make a difference in the Syracuse community. And we do want to make Syracuse the best university that we can. Whether that is by hopefully winning the election or by hopefully working in the Student Association because we are both really impassioned.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Since you both aren’t in SA right now, do you feel like there is anything you’re missing and, if so, how do you plan on making up for that?

Jessica Brosofsky: I definitely miss the fact that I am not focusing on other students’ needs. It’s very heavily focused on the needs of my members right now and not the university as a whole. That was disheartening, that I had to do that. I’m definitely missing the friendships and the connections I made. I enjoyed working with students and enjoyed working with SA representatives to make this university better for everyone. So I’m really excited to go back and have those connections again and spend time with everyone to make the university better as a whole.

Charlie Mastoloni: I miss being able to make the campus a better place. It’s really cool in my opinion to see heat lamps. I remember meeting with Aysha (Seedat) for coffee one day and saying, “Aysha! I think heat lamps are a good idea. Let’s create heat lamps.” Seeing that ideas finally come to fruition gives me hope that I can go back in there and make change again. That’s something I definitely missed — making a clear difference on campus if something I have been wanting to do.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: How about as far as being up-to-date on initiatives SA is trying to accomplish?

Charlie Mastoloni: Some of the initiatives SA is currently working on — I think some of them are… It’s similar to what we have been advocating for under diversity and seeing a version of that happen. It’s something I am happy to see happen, the whole Uber thing. But again, I differ in the way that SA can make a tangible difference right now by creating a student-run ride service. I think SA right now is doing some good work and we would definitely want to build on that in addition to bringing in our own ideas.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Can you name some of the other specifics that you think would work — initiatives working right now that you would like to continue?

Charlie Mastoloni: I think that really right now.

Jessica Brosofsky: I know they’ve been working really hard on the bike share program. And that’s been going on… I think it’s great that we are trying to continue that. The fact that Aysha (Seedat) is still pushing forward on this and still trying to make it happen on campus is great and we want to keep that momentum going. Obviously that is something that students have been wanting for the past three years that we have been trying to bring it to campus.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: You mention that all the candidates have good ideas. So what separates you two?

Charlie Mastoloni: The biggest thing that separates us is we are literally doing something called a “listening tour” and we really are the only candidates to come out so far in recognizing that the Student Association could be doing better is listening to students’ ideas and empowering them. We’ve been the only ones to really emphasize that above all else. I think we are different too in the sense that something that contains clear, tangible and specific initiatives for what we want to do. It’s not just fluffy words. There are clear goals to make Syracuse a better place.

Jessica Brosofsky: And our experiences inside and outside of the Student Association — that in itself — I understand. I was on the board of elections and membership so I really understand the bylaws and workings of the Student Association and how to work with members and make sure members are doing the best that they can be doing. And having that perspective and hearing about SA from the outside. I think we know have this really great balance of being able to merge the two and take that outside point of view.

Charlie Mastoloni: We are, first off, the most experienced ticket. Both of us have served in SA since freshman year and that combined experience is more than every other ticket so far. Besides that, it’s like what Jess said, too. We have experience outside of SA so we have that ability to provide that outside perspective on what students want. Stepping back from SA and looking at what is going well and what students want to see changed — what else could be better. I think that is really unique for us as well.

Jessica Brosofsky: It’s great. We met with Alpha Phi Alpha the other day and they said we were the first candidates since the member, Jacob, was a senior, that was since freshman year. And he had these amazing ideas they were telling us all about… a notable change since Kent Syverud came in as chancellor and hearing that perspective that I had never known about and that we are going out and talking to these students and they are really appreciating it really sets us apart.

Charlie Mastoloni: We’re getting a lot of positive feedback so far from these different organizations we have been meeting with and they’re going out there and a lot of them are saying, “Hey, this is the first time we’ve had SA come out and say, ‘Hey, what can we do better?’” You know, and that’s great to see and is why we are doing what we’re doing. We really want to reconnect SA back to the general population.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Do you think SU has the responsibility to put funds into the city of Syracuse?

Jessica Brosofsky: Funds more so as bodies. I think making sure our students are down in the community volunteering. When Nancy Cantor was here a big initiative was making sure the hill and the Syracuse community weren’t so divided and were more of one. I actually volunteer down at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and Clary Middle School as an intern and they just appreciate it so much, having students come down. And working with students to make sure that is a better presence next year when we take office — that we are better connecting to the community.

Charlie Mastoloni: I think the biggest thing too is we have talked to a bunch of different community organizations and the biggest resource that Syracuse has is its students. Because of that, we want to look into getting students to want to get involved with the community. To have that be a continued thing that is being advertised since freshman year. Syracuse, we have a great asset at our disposal by being in a major city and we have a responsibility to not only give back but to try to make this place better before we leave, you know?

The Daily Orange Editorial Board:  You talk about SA not being a government. Do you think there should be a student governing body?

Charlie Mastoloni: No. They should be an association that acts on the interests of students.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Back to the city relationship. So SU just announced that $7 million was just appropriated to the city with $2.5 million to programs and things like that. Is that something you both support or do you think that it should be more trying to get more bodies down there?

Jessica Brosofsky: No, we definitely need to support that. I think from a student perspective, obviously, having students spend money in in the city is good economically. And I think it’s amazing that our school’s board of trustees has decided to do that so that students can be more involved in the community they live in and not so isolated up on the hill.

Charlie Mastoloni: Yeah, but honestly it comes down to instilling a desire in students to want to go volunteer in the community and we want to look into, at SA, continuing to empower organizations to be able to get involved. And we want to work with them and listen to them and have people start meetings and how to bridge the gap that exists right now between the city and the school.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Where do you stand on the student athletic fee?

Charlie Mastoloni: In terms of what?

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: In terms of do you support having a student athletic fee? There were some discussions last fall of the possibility of a $100 student athletic fee and is that something you guys would want to explore?

Charlie Mastoloni: We are all for making the games more accessible and affordable for students. We want students to have access to the most affordable way possible to get into as many football games as they want, basketball games to show support because we have such — our sports teams are really awesome right now. Another thing for football too is making football more accessible, more affordable for students to get into. Then students would definitely show up more which would be really really great.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board: Quick follow-up off of that, maybe student football tickets are cheaper than basketball tickets. Do you think you would work with athletics to try to get ticket prices down or how would you make the games more affordable? How exactly would you go about that?

Charlie Mastoloni: It would come down to meeting with the powers that be within the athletic department, talking with representatives of Otto’s Army and different student organizations that are involved in having fan sections so we can talk to them and from there look into creating our own policy that would better reflect what students want, better reflect what directors think are the best options and opportunities to go to games more.

Published on April 11, 2016 at 7:48 am