Behind the Defend Affirmative Action Party's name and its priority of developing the University into a leader for a new civil rights movement lie a variety of other goals through which the party hopes to defend the rights of all students on campus.

DAAP vice presidential candidate Ben Royal said he believes affirmative action will affect students on the campus more than any other issue in the near future.

Royal said the University must be the leading campus in the defense of affirmative action, citing the two lawsuits pending against the University's Law School and the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, which challenge the University's use of race as a factor in admissions.

"To win these cases at the Supreme Court level, or at any level, we have to be building a new civil rights movement," Royal said.

He added that the movement will center around "getting people to the trial and making sure we have a strong turnout."

Royal said that DAAP representatives will try to win national support by attending other campuses and civil rights conferences.

Agnes Aleobua, DAAP's presidential candidate, said if elected, the party also plans to educate students on affirmative action.

In addition to educating students, Aleobua said her party would like to bring speakers to the University, petition the Supreme Court in defense of affirmative action and transport students to participate in a pro-affirmative action march in Washington.

In addition to its affirmative action defense, DAAP has historically fought for the rights of all University students, Aleobua said.

"One of the main things we've focused on outside of affirmative action has been the fight against sexism," she said.

She added that DAAP has recently supported the fraternities and sororities - which she said are composed of predominantly white students - when they were "scapegoated by police and the administration."

DAAP's other goals include lifting sanctions against Iraq, stopping tuition increases, fighting Anti-Semitism and anti-homosexual bigotry and supporting the Graduate Employees Organization.

Issues including the sanctions on Iraq are important for student government, DAAP candidate Cyril Cordor said.

They affect the student government not only because they affect how minorities relate to other students on campus, but also because debating them "puts out the issues into public," he said.

Aleobua said that while she feels MSA should represent students' political opinions, the party also supports funding student groups and working on campus projects.

The slate of candidates DAAP is running to defend students' rights is dynamic and diverse because student government should be integrated, she added.

"We're trying to give power to the people who have traditionally been disenfranchised in our society," she said.

"That means running blacks and minorities, that means running gay and lesbian students, that means running women," Aleobua said.

LSA junior Neal Lyons, running in DAAP for MSA, said the candidates also have experience as student activists, which will be important when the affirmative action case is debated in the Supreme Court.

He said MSA will need "true representatives and spokespeople for the student body when the national media blitz arrives on campus and begins asking representatives on student government what they feel about the defense of blacks and minorities."

Royal said some of the DAAP candidates have served on MSA and many have worked with its committees on projects like "Stop the Hate."