On February 23, 2023, The University of Houston hosted their annual Student Government Association Debate for the role of President and Vice President of the Student Body.
Running for re-election is Vice President Bentley Burk and President Joshua Martin from the Vote for the Students Party. Running against them in the Students Unite Party, for Vice President Tyler Luke and for President Benjamin Rizk.
The debate was jump started with candidate Burk being asked his first question of why he deems his running mate for President (Joshua Martin), where he responded in an array of examples as “working with UHPD to correct the issue of poor lighting” and working the Favor Directly to “get campus student contraceptives and birth control at an affordable price.”
Candidate Luke was then forwarded the initial question of his running mates highlights. He then proceeded to respond that his running mate (Benjamin Rizk) is “passionate, driven, and sleep deprived.” He also mentioned some of the things that he would do with him in the lead like “bring minimum wage from $8 to $10 because [their] party in the past brought the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.”
After candidate Luke’s concluding statement, there was the shift from the Vice President portion of the debate to the President portion. Starting with current President Joshua Martin, he prefaced his opening speech with the reason for running for the Presidential position last year of how divided SGA was and how he wanted to ''change the organization by flipping the hands of the government back to the students.” Overall, he believes his campaign “reflected Chancellor Cotour’s goal of becoming a top 50% public university.” After the introduction, candidate Rizk was asked to rebut his candidate’s opening statement where he then agreed but also responded “As co-president for Students for Better last semester, I was on the ground *throwing* out voter registration forms and collaborating with many other orgs who were on the ground talking to students about the importance of voting.” But he also commented that SGA was present during that time.
When it was directed for candidate Rizk to engage in his introductory speech, he prefaced with his gratitude and honor of being a potential candidate for he was aware that not many students had the opportunity of being up there. He then went on to say that by seeing all the changes that were made in administration at 55th, 56th, 57th admins that there’s “a lot that can be done to help alleviate the economic burden students are going through.”
After a series of questions picked at random and by social media, there was a final 2 minute speech given by each candidate. Benjamin Rizk was asked to go first, his premise for his speech originated from his own personal anecdote of visiting his family in Lebanon and how he saw scathing examples of inequality, and that “it didn’t start with violence, but that it started with making it to where people can’t afford necessary goods, and not being able to have a voice in the political process.” He then proceeded to say a big thing that made him decide more than that experience was “running on the platform of uplifting the student voice.”
After Rizk’s speech Joshua Martin then proceeded to state that this past year serving the student body at the University of Houston has been the honor of his life, that he’s had the chance of “making great relationships with the people of the 59th Administration, and that there has been great work done.” He then elaborated that the one thing that is clear on his campaign is that students accept and support the work that has been put forth and done. After his declaration of student support, he proceeded to list the number of different student organizations and fraternities that have openly supported his campaign. At the end of the list, he goes on to say “they realize that we’re a student government that's going to advocate for them, and that they're not going to let anyone halt the process of moving forward.”
Voting for both positions is open today till March 2nd, and we encourage you to make your voice heard.
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