The race for the next SG president is only hours old, yet we already have a clear idea of which tickets would cost our student body more money than they would be worth. Taking into account the current state of the economy, we cannot afford to elect fiscally reckless candidates.Andy Palermo and Phoebe Hathorn’s ticket has promised to take SG to the next level, and they’re absolutely capable of doing it if that next level means an increase in wasteful spending. For instance, they pledge, according to their campaign Web site, to decrease the amount of computer-based testing. This would mean LSU students would lose 100 percent of the thousands of dollars invested in computer-based testing, and the wasting of time and energy spent on building the system. It is also interesting to note how this would contradict their plan to make our campus more environmentally friendly by encouraging professors to accept assignments online, thus saving paper.They also propose to create a “house of representatives” in SG that would be made up of members representing each student organization. With the hundreds of student organizations on campus, the proposed house of representatives would end up being one of the largest and most expensive organizations on campus. Also, it is important to mention that Palermo and Hathorn may be opening a can of worms for future SG administrations considering how easy it is to create a student organization on our campus. What’s to stop someone from creating a large number of organizations simply in the interest of increasing their sway within SG. This proposal would mean bigger, less efficient, more expensive, more intrusive government, and that’s the last thing this university needs with looming budget cuts.Third, they plan to make TigerCash balances accessible on PAWS, meaning the current Tiger Card Web site would fall by the wayside, while the money spent on a redundant program falls down the drain.
 
Jasper Hollandsociology sophomore