USU students meet with candidates for Utah House of Representatives
Utah House of Representatives candidates Karina Andelin Brown and Casey Snider visited Utah State University for the inaugural meeting of Aggies UNITE, a student organization formed around the goal of bridging gaps in communities, Thursday night.
Brown and Snider shared opposing viewpoints and light jokes as they discussed both their own candidacy and the propositions up for a vote this November. More often than not, the two agreed on the urgency of the issues, but split on potential solutions.
“Our intentions are more similar than different,” said Désirée Chávez, an Aggies UNITE officer. “It’s the way we go about those intentions that’s the problem.”
Before the candidates spoke, attendees were handed papers outlining common pitfalls of conversation and ways to encourage keeping calm in arguments. The paper outlined mistakes like “we believe — we are right, and ‘they’ are wrong,” and “we don’t ask enough questions.”
Brown, who has served as the secretary for the Utah Democratic Health Care Caucus, supported initiatives offering action on pressing issues facing Utahns.
“If we can get the ballot initiative to expand medicaid, Proposition 3, passed, approximately 150,000 Utahns will get healthcare privileges,” Brown said. “Healthcare isn’t the only area of life that we need to fight for vulnerable Utahns — we need to protect our children, guard the abused, lift the poor.”
Snider, who stepped down from his position as chairman of the Cache County Republican Party last year in order to run, often agreed with Brown on the problems facing Utahns, but criticized the limits and funding suggestions of the offered solutions on the ballot.
“My biggest hangup is that whatever program we pass, we have to make sure we can pay for it,” Snider said. “If you get to a point where you can’t pay for it, then you’re letting people down who have said ‘I need it.’”
Brown and Snider are running to fill a vacancy in the 5th District of Utah’s House of Representatives following the retirement of Rep. Curt Webb on Oct. 1.
Aggies UNITE was founded earlier this year after social work student Alissa Brown grew frustrated with the negative discourse surrounding politics on social media.
“I wanted to create a forum where students could come together to talk about issues in a safe space and learn how to have difficult dialogue, and learn how to navigate social media, and learn how to find factual sources,” Brown said. “Opinions are great, but your opinion does need to be backed up with facts if you’re going to have a constructive conversation.”
Brown worked with Jessica Lucero, a USU social work professor, to form the organization’s structure and values, recruiting like-minded students as the semester began. The name UNITE is an acronym for Understanding Notions In Thoughtful Examples.
Thursday’s meeting began with students breaking up into groups to discuss future topics and issues for future meetings. The meeting also featured a short presentation on voting and voter resources from Cache County Council candidate and social work professor Jennifer Roark.
“I think a lot of it is going to be trial and error as we see how the forums play out and how people react,” Brown said.
Chávez pointed out the the unique opportunity students had to engage with local candidates at the meeting.
“Instead of having it in the form of a debate, we’re having it in the form of a conversation,” she said. “They’re getting to express the issues that matter to them in the community, but the students get to ask to the candidates about what they would do.”
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