The race for vice president of Financial Affairs features two of the most qualified and impressive candidates for any office. That being said, the CW Editorial Board believes Hunter Richey is more suited for this particular office than his opponent, Jordan Forrest.
The CW Editorial Board was impressed by all four of Hunter’s platform ideas: corporate project funding partnerships, an “ideas fair” for student organizations receiving FAC funding to showcase what they did with the money, a marketing committee for student outreach and student financial health seminars. We particularly liked the “ideas fair” that would give student organizations the opportunity to showcase their outstanding work to potential investors and employers, which would double as a visual argument for why FAC funding should increase. We appreciate his experience as an alternate on the FAC committee this year and the dedication and initiative he has shown in researching this position.
We believe Jordan Forrest is the right student running for the wrong office. While she has significant financial experience with managing SGA budgets and fundraising for internal and external SGA initiatives, we cannot shake the feeling that her heart is in student programming. We believe Forrest would make an excellent vice president of Student Affairs, executive vice president or even SGA president because of her wide-ranging interests and talents. She embodies students serving students through her efforts to reach out to all 540 student organizations during her campaign period and the work she has done with the It’s On Us campaign this year. Her willingness to attend a function on a Friday night for an organization that had already endorsed her underscored how much Forrest cares about others.
She would be much more likely to gain this Board’s endorsement had she had run for a position with a wider scope of duties, as we fear she would stretch herself too thin on non-financial initiatives which would cause her struggle to meet both the requirements of this office and her outside goals.
Richey’s shortcomings are mainly highlighted in contrast to Forrest’s strength. Namely, he appears to have a smaller network of students to gather ideas from, and few can match the student, faculty and administrator relationships Forrest has built during her time at the University. With that said, we believe Richey has the knowledge, work ethic and support to maintain and expand the good work undertaken by this office in years past.
Ultimately, Hunter Richey combines the right qualifications, the best ideas and most importantly the narrow focus needed to be the best candidate for this office. We endorse him without reservation.
Our View represents the consensus of The Crimson White Editorial Board.
