Student Senate hosts City Council at-large candidate forum

Independent candidates Damon Krane and Iris Virjee at the Ohio University Student Senate candidate forum. Photo by Emily Zeiler.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add details relating to the absence of Councilmembers Ben Ziff, Sarah Grace and Micah McCarey at the candidate forum.

Two of the five Athens City Council at-large candidates attended the Ohio University Student Senate candidate forum Thursday evening to answer questions by Student Senate, student media and the Ohio U student body.

The event, organized by Student Senate’s Governmental Affairs Commission, invited the five at-large candidates. However, only two of the candidates were present -- Independent candidates Damon Krane and Iris Virjee attended the forum. Democrats Sarah Grace, Micah McCarey and Ben Ziff were not in attendance. 

Krane had previously reached out to The New Political and The Post, as well as the event’s moderator, Governmental Affairs Commissioner Molly Pennington, about the idea of hosting a candidate forum to engage with student voters. 

“Voter engagement is something I really want to work on in the governmental affairs commission this year,” Pennington said. “So when he brought me that opportunity I was like ‘I can not say no.’” 

Athens County Democrats co-chair of social media Abi Scherer claimed the Democratic candidates had received an email asking when they could do the forum, but their suggestions were not taken into account for the decided date.

Ziff said he knew ahead of time he would not be able to attend the scheduled date due to conflict with his work schedule.

“I knew the date and time close to two weeks ago and informed them that it was unlikely I could attend, and then informed them a little over a week ago that I definitely couldn’t,” Ziff said in a text message. 

However, emails provided by Krane show that Ziff said Sept. 20 that the 30th “might be doable,” and that he would just need someone to cover his shift.  

Grace stated Sept. 21 that the 30th would also work for her as long as it was planned for after 5 p.m.

Pennington also sent out an email Sept. 27 to Krane, Virjee, Grace and McCarey with the rules and procedures of the town hall attached. 

The emails show that Krane and Virjee were made aware Thursday morning they would be the only two candidates at the forum later that day. Pennington told Krane that all three candidates had separate scheduling conflicts for that evening. 

Student engagement was one of the main issues discussed at the forum, along with several other topics.

Pressing issues: 

Krane identified “lack of democracy” in the city of Athens as a pressing issue for him, which he said comes from a low turnout in city elections.

He believes low voter turnout has led to politicians being elected by just small portions of the city’s population, creating a government that is not representative of the local community.

“The lack of student voting, the lack of working-class voting, has resulted in government that is extremely unrepresentative of local population,” Krane said. 

Virjee said the most pressing issue to her was wealth inequality in Athens. 

She also mentioned having alternatives to emergency response that are specialized in responding to mental, behavioral, drug addiction and abuse crises, as well as improving pedestrian infrastructure as pressing issues.  

Athens housing market: 

Virjee voiced her support for tenant’s rights when asked about the local housing market and rental properties affecting students.

“I think that’s something that most working people can relate to, and a big issue with that is tenant’s rights and how they need to be amended, or even more policies created, in order to deconstruct some of the unfair structures that lead to inequality and lead to discriminatory housing processes in Athens,” Virjee said. 

Student engagement: 

While discussing student engagement with local politics, Krane called out the Democratic candidates for not being present at the candidate forum.

“If you look up here tonight, you might notice a pattern. There are five candidates in the at-large council race, three are Democrats and two of them are independents. All of the independents are here tonight for the student forum. None of the Democrats are here tonight. They all had something better to do,” Krane said. “But that doesn’t make any sense, right? Because students overwhelmingly vote Democrat. So why are the Democrats ignoring student voters?” 

Krane said while running for mayor in 2019, he and independent City Council candidate Ellie Hamrick were the first to text Ohio U students about registering to vote in city elections, asking why two independents were the first to do that. He used this as an example of him reaching out to students to get involved. 

Virjee said it’s important for students to get involved and be connected with the community to see changes they want to see, adding that this will help people feel like their vote matters. 

“This area of Appalachia has a very unique and strong history that you are now part of by being here,” Virjee said. 

Diversity and the Make Respect Visible Campaign: 

Discussing the university’s Make Respect Visible campaign, the candidates were asked how they were committed to diversity and inclusion in Athens. 

“Those kinds of phrases, I’ll be frank, they’ve always kind of driven me nuts,” Virjee said. 

Virjee urged the need for more structural change in order to improve accessibility around Athens, using parking restrictions as an example. 

“Some of those techniques are used by positions of authority and tend to be very conformative rather than structural,” she said. 

Krane put emphasis on a need to confront power imbalances. He used Athens banning source of income discrimination, something he said he campaigned on. 

Local and small businesses: 

Krane touted his background when asked how he would support local businesses. 

“I’m the child of small business owners, both my parents were small business owners. My mom was pretty successful as a business owner. I used to have a food truck myself. And I’m also a socialist,” Krane said. “In fact, I was even elected president of a business association, and I’m a socialist. And the relationship between those two is that I want everyone to be their own boss.” 

Krane said he believes something City Council could do is intervene in private enterprise “to steer it in a better direction” and to encourage better practices, specifically mentioning business and the environment. 

Virjee discussed how affordability needs to be addressed. She said an issue is whether employees who support the economy can afford to patronize it as well. 

Poverty and food access: 

Krane listed housing costs and income inequality as big sources of poverty in Athens. He said a solution would be to “leverage a particular relationship with local business and also tourism” to improve the well-being of the community. 

He suggested an idea that the city and university create a local business tourism guide for new Ohio U students. He said this could show not only where to shop, but also create a “social responsibility score” of local businesses. 

“We could incentivize better practices by promoting those businesses better, using them as a draw for tourism, but making sure that new tourism dollars are equitably distributed,” Krane said. 

Virjee pointed to the university on this issue. 

“There is kind of a situation with the university kind of exploiting their position in Athens and being, ‘you can’t criticize us because you rely on me,’” Virjee said. “In doing that the university buys up a lot of land, which affects the housing and scarcity issue.” 

Emily Zeiler contributed to this report.