By Nicole F. Park

Daily Titan Staff Writer

Students listen to the candidates running for board of directors. Photo by Ron Fu/Daily Titan Staff Photographer

Voting for the board of directors of Associated Students Inc. begins today at four polling tents located around campus. Votes may be submitted at marked ASI tents at Mihaylo Hall, McCarthy Hall and the entrances of Pollak Library and the Titan Student Union. The voting window is open from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. today and Thursday.

The board of directors for ASI sits at the top of the student government’s hierarchy alongside ASI President Juli Santos. The board is comprised of 16 voting students, two each from the eight colleges on campus. Each college’s two board members are elected to allocate funds and vote on company and university issues.

ASI Elections hosted “Coffee with the Candidates” yesterday afternoon in the Becker Amphitheatre. From noon to 1 p.m., students were given the opportunity to meet their potential peer leaders face-to-face and ask them questions that would help determine the final voting decision.

“This is a chance for students to meet and ask the candidates anything they want. The directors are the voice of the students,” said Elections Commissioner Genevieve Eldred in the event’s opening statement.

Sophomore theater major Amanda Petrocelly said it was more urgent than ever to vote.

“The free coffee sparked my interest, but I’m glad to be here. I didn’t vote last year because I didn’t really know what was going on and didn’t want to just pick a name off the list. Now I’m going to know who is the best vote for me,” Petrocelly said. “Now that we’re broke, it’s even more important to pick someone who knows where to put our money.”

Nine of the 14 candidates running for positions on the board were present for the open forum, and three candidates came late, citing class scheduling for their delayed arrivals.

Questions answered by the panel of potential board members concerned the candidates’ ability to lead, their qualifications to do so at CSUF, the goals of the candidates and their previous school contributions.

Kyle Herbertz is running for a position in the College of Business and Economics. He lists past achievements and current positions held that included being a Camp Titan counselor and CSUF campus tour guide.

Another candidate running for the business position is Eric Niu. His candidacy platform differs from Herbertz’s by focusing on how much he wants to become involved, rather than how involved he has been.

“I’m your ordinary commuter student who didn’t know much about ASI before. One of my Pi Kappa Phi brothers told me about the position at a meeting. I want to be more than a leader; I want to be a representative for students because I know what students want and need.”

Niu told the audience how he wanted to create specific changes within his college in textbook costs and international internships and study abroad programs for business majors focusing on foreign facets of the industry.

Many students running for positions used their two-minute response time to advocate for scholarships, clubs and communication within their college’s inter-club council, which allocates funding to extracurricular academic interest groups.

Chelsey Haardt, who is running for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said, “We need to make clubs in our college more apparent and bring more awareness to their existence on campus. I want to arrange better public awareness of the clubs because, from them, students can get scholarships, internships, positions within those clubs and networking opportunities, and I feel responsible to let students know.”

After the event’s close, Eldred said, “I thought the event went pretty well, but we only had about 60 participants and almost all of the candidates made it to the event. It has been my goal this semester to make elections more visible and accessible to CSUF students, and I feel the event today helped to accomplish that goal.”

There will be four voting sites at CSUF, with online voting available for Irvine campus students and any other enrolled students who can’t vote on campus. Online voting is available at Vote.Fullerton.edu upon sign-in with a valid CSUF campus-wide ID number. Individual candidate profiles are also available to view on the site.

After voting on campus, students will be treated to early Halloween candy, “I Voted” stickers and pens, along with the chance to win one of three $25 gift cards to Yard House in a drawing sponsored by Communications 451-C’s advertisement campaign with Honda Insight.

The newly-elected board members will be announced at 9 p.m. in the TSU Legislative Chambers Thursday night.