Student Senate holds final debate as election day looms

Photo via The New Political staff

With elections just a week away, Student Senate returned to Bentley Hall on Tuesday for its second and final debate of the 2025 campaign season. Candidates from the Vote Change and Vote Action tickets delivered brief opening statements before opening the floor to questions from the audience. 

Incumbent President Dan Gordillo, representing the Action ticket alongside his running mates — International Affairs Senator Taras Tarasun for Vice President and Luke Fredericks for Treasurer — promised to continue “Safety Walk” initiatives. Gordillo’s challengers, presidential candidate Mia Grossholz and vice presidential candidate Reagan Daley, proposed the expansion of Cat Cab, Ohio U’s student taxi service.  

Grossholz and Daley touted the campaign’s “We C.A.R.E” tagline — an acronym for Community, Awareness, Resources, and Engagement — as they highlighted their proposed initiatives, which included a textbook exchange system, canned food drives and a system for donating leftover meal swipes. 

One audience member asserted that proposed initiatives such as meal swipe donations “already happen.” Ohio U’s Cat’s Cupboard food pantry has previously held periodic meal swipe drives. Most recently, a meal swipe drive running from Oct. 7 to Oct. 11 allowed students to donate extra meal swipes to support Cat’s Cupboard.

Over the course of the debate, Grossholz and Daley made nonspecific appeals to inclusion. When an audience member asked the two tickets about funding for student clubs and organizations, Gordillo responded by explaining the Senate’s procedures for appropriating funds via the Senate Appropriations Committee. Meanwhile, Grossholz responded, “We want everyone to feel welcome here at school. I think feeling important is important and I feel like everyone is.” 

Another audience member asked the candidates to describe how, if elected, they would avoid letting bias toward members of the opposition tickets affect their conduct. “When I’m looking at [the application of] a new senator or commissioner,” Gordillo said, “I’m strictly looking at their qualifications. Matter of fact, a lot of times I blot out people’s names. I don’t wanna know a person’s name, I don’t wanna know a person’s agenda.” 

“I just want to make sure that everyone who wants to make OU a better place has the opportunity to do that,” Daley said. “We want everyone to feel included.” 

As audience questions wrapped up, an audience member watching the debate via Microsoft Teams addressed a pending defamation lawsuit which names Gordillo as a defendant. An Ohio U student interrupted the reading of the question, asking “Isn’t this personal?”

But Gordillo elected to answer the question. “In regards to the defamation lawsuit, at the end of the day, I know I’m on the right side. I’m confident in the facts of the case and I’m confident in my attorney’s ability to successfully argue them,” Gordillo said.

“I am absolutely confident that it will not distract [me] from student advocacy, because it never will,” Gordillo asserted. “Frankly, it basically shows that we are here to not focus on the past. We are here to focus on the future. We are here to make sure that students are always being advocated for. If we dwell in the past and constantly live there, how can we focus on the crises of tomorrow?” 

The lawsuit, filed March 21, alleges a “defamatory and malicious campaign by a group of undergraduate students at Ohio University to destroy the reputation and ‘destroy the life’ of their classmate,” former Student Senate vice president Isaac Davis. The lawsuit refers to controversies surrounding Davis’s removal from and reinstatement to Student Senate and subsequent reporting on those controversies.  

Finally, alloted time for closing arguments allowed both tickets to reiterate key points of their platform. The Vote Change ticket highlighted safety and community engagement. “We hope to have your vote and promote change, because we care,” Grossholz said. 

The Vote Action ticket promised to improve parking on campus and “take action to represent all 30,000 bobcats between six different campuses”. 

“Don't be a fool on April 1st, and take action,” Gordillo finished. The student body will have the opportunity to decide between the two tickets next Tuesday via a link sent to students’ Ohio U email addresses.