Go vote for your SGA representatives today!

The Student Government Association (SGA) Elections will take place from April 6 to April 10, 2009. The UTEP SGA represents over 20,000 students and handles a budget of over $70,000. In order to maximize the quality of the SGA administration (and consequently the student body), it is imperative that every UTEP student intelligently participates in SGA elections and affairs.

In order to help students better inform themselves about their presidential candidates, the Regional Identity interviewed the three candidates about their party platforms and goals.

The Regional Identity (sponsored by the Regional Economic Development Association) is preparing to interview the three SGA presidential campaigns for the upcoming 2009 elections.

We will investigate each candidate’s background information, party platform, stances on various campus issues, and the questions that interest our readers the most. We will also attempt to record and post a unique thirty-second elevator pitch of each candidate.

If you have specific questions that you would like to ask each candidate, please post them below. The best questions will be selected and then asked in our sit down interviews with each candidate. Due to our short time frame (elections are next week!), we will stop accepting questions sometime on Wednesday April 1, 2009.

We hope to conduct the interviews and publish the results on Thursday April 2. Get your questions in!

Recap from the Office of Senator Eliot Shapleigh

Recap of “Adios ASARCO, Hello Future” event:

• Time and date: 11am-2pm on Saturday, February 21, 2009
• Notable guest speakers: Businessman Robert Ardovino, Former Mayor Bert Williams, Mayor John Cook, and Senator Eliot Shapleigh
• Former Mayor Williams was presented with a Senate Resolution from Eliot Shapleigh, applauding his contributions against ASARCO
• Mayor Cook presented Senator Shapleigh with the “Star on the Mountain” Award for his contributions against ASARCO
• Get The Lead Out presented a professional video recapping the grass root movements against ASARCO
• Nearly 10 students/student organizations presented ideas for the future use of the ASARCO site
• Media coverage and promotion from The El Paso Times, Channel 4, Channel 9, Channel 14, Univision, What’s Up El Paso, The UTEP Prospector, the Newspaper Tree, and more
• Following the event, many community members networked together to celebrate the closure of ASARCO and the opportunities the closure will bring. Pizza was generously donated by Papa John’s Pizza.

Student presenters:

• Intro/conclusion: Richard Sapien, Priscilla Moreno
• MC: Erik Pavia
• Derick O’Hara from Engineers without Borders
• Angel Diaz from Students for Reform
• Alex Muñoz from Regional Economic Development Association
• Diego Rico from Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization
• Alan Jiminez
• Mario Salomon
• Claudia Ordaz

The student presentations were recorded and will be available to view next week. However, if you would like to view the PowerPoint file for any student presentation, please request the presentation through our comments section at the bottom of the page.

Media Sightings

With recent news of ASARCO permanently shutting down, Texas Senator Eliot Shapleigh is already looking forward to the prospects of a cleaner, healthier, and more prosperous El Paso.

As the city begins to plan and speculate about the outlook of the former smelting plant property, Senator Shapleigh is interested in what the UTEP student body has to say about the upcoming redevelopment of the land. The prospective uses of the ASARCO property will bring significant social, environmental, and economic effects to the region.

Anybody can attend and enjoy the festivities following the presentations!