Students gathered to ask the Associated Students of Madison's spring electoral candidates questions regarding their vision for the university and the student government Wednesday night.
Candidates are running for 29 seats on student council and five seats on the Student Services Finance Committee.
Some candidates agreed that while issues such as finances and safety are important for ASM members to address, it is equally as important to inform students that these problems exist.
Letters and Sciences candidate Dan Shanahan said student awareness needs to be addressed.
""The thing that separates everyone is who can take the issues and make students aware of what's going on,"" Shanahan said.
During the Q&A session, candidates also discussed how they would incorporate diversity into the university.
While some candidates said the media could be useful in promoting diversity, others, including Nikolas Magallon, said face-to-face communication is more important.
""I think that ASM needs to get out of 333 East Campus Mall and go into spaces of diversity,"" Magallon said.
All candidates who were asked what changes need to be implemented said outreach needs to be increased. Many candidates also said ASM needs to push for more student power in shared governance.
Letters and Sciences candidate Olivia Wick-Bander said ASM needs to work harder to let students know what they do.
""I saw e-mails from ASM, but I didn't see people from ASM. I didn't know what they did, and I had to do a lot of reading to figure that out. I don't think there's enough outreach,"" Wick-Bander said.
Some SSFC candidates said they want to be on SSFC so they can better educate students on how their segregated fees are allocated.
Current SSFC Chair Matt Manes and SSFC candidates Daniel Gibbs and Joe Vanden Avond said educating students is not as important as lowering fees.
""Unlike the rest of these candidates, I don't really care if campus knows about segregated fees,"" Manes said. ""My job is to keep the amount people pay as low as possible.""
Many SSFC candidates also said that while maintaining the mindset that they want to lower segregated fees is important, actually accomplishing this is not always realistic.
The candidates noted that with segregated fees funding ongoing construction projects, lowering segregated fees within the next school year is unlikely.
Other candidates said although it would be difficult, they would try to lower segregated fees by looking at what students use least and cutting those services.
