Last night, as Minnesota Student Association presidential candidate George Morris answered the phone at the Delta Theta Sigma fraternity, the atmosphere was relaxed. His running mate, Kelly Hite, listened and waited for the news.
“Fifth place,” Morris said.
Although the pair took last place, they took the loss well.
“It would have been nice to do a little better,” Morris said. “It was fun. At least people voted for us. At least we brought the points out.”
Morris and Hite did much of their campaigning in St. Paul, as well as some word-of-mouth campaigning in Minneapolis.
Additionally, Hite lamented that so many of the polling locations, most of which were in Minneapolis, were closed throughout the election. On the first day of the elections, only four polls were open, only one of which was in St. Paul.
“When you’ve only got two (polling locations) in St. Paul and seven in Minneapolis, that’s not really fair,” said Hite. “A lot of it does come down to Minneapolis vs. St. Paul. It’s a fact of life.”
For their campaign, Morris, an environmental science major, and Hite, majoring in natural resources and environmental science, focused on bringing MSA closer to the students.
“Right now it doesn’t seem like a lot of people know what MSA is,” Morris said.
Their ideas included talking with University officials about stabilizing tuition and rotating MSA Forum meetings throughout the campuses.
Additionally, they would like to have been able to better unify the campus by proposing a club of the month program — recognition of one student group to give University students insight into that club.
Hite said, “We wouldn’t have gotten rid of (MSA) but we would have made a lot of changes.”