September 24, 2012

With a campaign slogan of “We strive to touch the lives of every Tiger,” candidates Spencer Maass and Shelby Catalano are preparing for the 2012 Missouri Students Association presidential elections in November.

Maass-Catalano is one of three presidential/vice-presidential slates running this year.

Maass and Catalano both said they feel their slate can relate to the most students of the three slate. Catalano is not involved in Greek Life, but Maass is a member of Sigma Nu. Additionally, Catalano is the only woman in any of the three slates.

“I think we are on par with most people,” Maass said. “We can identify and relate to the majority of Mizzou students.”

Beyond the unique demographic they hope to introduce, the pair plans to introduce numerous initiatives in order to better the campus.

“It’s important to us because we’ve got some issues we’d like to address on campus,” Maass said. “We felt that without us running, these issues would be overlooked or wouldn’t be able to be addressed.”

One of the slate’s goals is to institute a cross-campus orientation, Catalano said. She and Maass want every college to intermingle and for students to take active roles on campus.

For example, Catalano said she’d like to see architecture students getting involved with campus architecture or journalism students helping advertise for activities in other colleges on campus. She said they would like to work with teachers, deans and students to work together on common goals.

Another goal the slate has is to help the MU Division of Information Technology, Maass said. He said he recognizes that the wide array of laptops, smartphones and other devices overwhelm the wireless Internet servers.

They would like to help the division keep up with the increase in wireless Internet traffic, Maass said. They would like to look into the reallocation of funds within the division to better fund Mizzou Wireless, possibly pulling money from unused print quotas, Catalano said.

“It’s one of the few things that would be an improvement that every Mizzou student would immediately benefit from, rather than a small faction,” Maass said.

Additionally, Catalano said that they hope to make the campus more sustainable and to support the Coal Free Mizzou movement.

“We have a mass sustainability initiative,” MSA vice-presidential candidate Catalano said. “We’d like to correlate with the Sustainability Office to make MSA a more active part of Sustainability Week. We’d also like to expand the Mizzou Dashboard.”

The Mizzou Dashboard is instituted in several residence halls and measures the influx of power within the halls. It estimates the amount of power used and the cost to school. It can be used to compare energy usage between the halls. Catalano said they hope to expand it to all the residence halls to help bring awareness to the issue of energy usage and to encourage students to help conserve energy when possible.

Maass and Catalano both said they want to emphasize the importance of communication and outreach throughout their campaign. Both candidates have previous MSA experience.

Catalano has been on the MSA Budget Committee since her freshman year and is now the committee’s vice chairwoman. She also serves on the Student Fee Review Committee, which works with a $12.5 million budget.

Campaign manager and Maneater staffer David Wettroth said he thinks they bring a unique skill set to the table. He said they are all passionate about making a difference.

“We all have passions for helping students,” Wettroth said. “We want to be leading students to accomplish things and will need strong support from students. We want to get them involved and active in the school so they feel they had a hand in developing the school and preparing something spectacular for new people that come in, too.”

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