Editor’s note: This story is the fourth in a five-part series profiling each of the presidential and vice presidential Student Government tickets. The stories will run in alphabetical order based on the presidential candidate’s last name. As the University braces for an economic crisis, students campaigning for seats in Student Government have had to incorporate scaled down programs and fiscally responsible budgets into their platforms. While other tickets have proposed important and feasible changes for the University, the One Voice 2009 ticket claims it’s the only one that will be able to fulfill all of its campaign promises in the face of impending budget cuts.The One Voice ticket, manned by presidential candidate Greg Upton, College of Business senator, and vice presidential candidate Laura Boggs, SG executive director, said every one of the issues their ticket proposed is a feasible option for the University.According to Upton, other tickets have suggested serious infrastructure changes which would be too expensive for a University facing enormous budget cuts, such as more campus lighting, decreasing computer-based testing and new parking for students.”We want to focus on things we can do for students that aren’t really expensive,” Upton said.Upton, who has served one year in the SG Senate and two years on the Business College Council, said his training as an economics major gives him an advantage over other candidates when it comes to University fiscal issues. During his tenure with the SG Senate, Upton co-authored the bill creating the Student Initiative Committee, which organized student ideas on how best to spend $5,000 of student fees. Upton also said he was pivotal in creating the senate statistician position, which he said he would incorporate into his potential administration to help keep track of student opinions.PROGRAMSWhen developing programs for a possible administration, Upton and Boggs said they would focus on smaller issues which would only require a conservative investment from SG and University coffers.Though SG provides students with free scantrons and blue books in both the legislative and executive offices, Boggs said not enough was being done to advertise this to the students.If elected, the ticket said it would actively distribute testing material to the students, so long as they could get them from the distributor for less than students are paying.In the center of the hundreds of push cards distributed since they began campaigning, the ticket has proposed several changes for football season, including the replacement of the freshmen lottery for football tickets with a first-come-first-serve system, bonus priority points for attending all home games and setting a minimum percentage of student seats for the stadium.”By having a set percentage of Tiger Stadium for students, this can be a permanent seating arrangement which wouldn’t have to be discussed year after year,” Upton said.Upton recently put forward a bill in the Senate which would facilitate its transition into a paperless environment. The bill would replace many of the printed documents provided to senators before each meeting with a projector screen.A final plank in their platform is a food drive for the local homeless, based on collecting leftover meal plans from students at the end of the year. The drive would be optional and student run.”SG should be bigger than just things on campus,” Upton said. “This is an opportunity to really reach out to the Baton Rouge community.”BUDGET CUTS, FINANCEFighting the massive budget cuts facing the University is an important part of all SG campaigns this year.”The main thing is this — we have to present to the state the long-term cost of cutting higher education today,” Upton said.Upton said the main way any potential SG executive can impact how budget cuts will affect the University is to provide quantifiable evidence showing cutting higher education would adversely effect the state as a whole.Even if he’s not elected, Upton said he would work with University administrators and students to put together a document which would show numerically how fewer college graduates would have a negative long-term effect on the state’s economic growth.During her time working with SG President Colorado Robertson, Boggs said she helped begin the “Eye on the Tiger” program, which tracks the finances of SG over 14-day intervals.She said if her ticket were elected, this policy would be continued to keep students aware of every SG financial transaction.—-Contact Adam Duvernay at [email protected]