Asking students to join its members in the “movement to ‘Make Michigan,’” campus’ newest party plans to enter the race for Central Student Government president and vice president.
Public Policy junior Bobby Dishell, CSG vice president, and LSA sophomore Meagan Shokar, speaker of the CSG assembly, will represent the new Make Michigan movement, running for president and vice president, respectively. The Make Michigan party hopes to focus their party on providing for students rather than on politics.
LSA junior Emily Lustig and LSA senior Andrew Craft, the chairs of Make Michigan, said Make Michigan is not a party; rather, it is a movement that will focus on concrete, achievable goals including health and safety on campus.
While it is uncommon for two high-ranking CSG members to run on the same ticket, Dishell and Shokar will square off against Public Policy junior Carly Manes, the only other declared candidate in the race.
Manes is an LSA representative in the CSG assembly and was nominated Sunday as forUM’s presidential candidate. Outside of student government, Manes founded Students for Choice her freshman year. The organization advocates for reproductive rights and has roughly 32 active members.
forUM has not yet announced its vice presidential candidate.
After two consecutive years of elections marred by hearings and lengthy court battles, Lustig and Craft said maintaining a positive election focused on the issues is paramount.
“The political garbage that’s been happening … it takes away from the goal,” Lustig said.
forUM won a plurality of CSG’s Assembly seats in last year’s election and initially won the presidential vote, but forUM’s executive candidates were disqualified for influencing students while voting.
LSA senior Chris Osborn ran for president on the forUM ticket in 2013, winning the popular election. However, he was later disqualified from the election after reviews by the University Election Commission found him in violation of the election code.
During the April 2013 Central Student Judiciary hearing on the matter, Rackham student Chris Stevens — CSJ chief justice — told the Daily it “sickened” him for elections to be decided by court cases.
Craft explained that Dishell and Shokar are the kind of people who students can trust to advocate concrete change and veer away from bureaucratic issues.
“When I see someone that I can believe in that can do really great things for the student body, I want to get behind it,” he said.
The other two parties from last year’s election, MomentUM and youMICH, are inactive, and it is unclear if any other parties will run candidates for executive positions. Additionally, the Defend Affirmative Action Party has run candidates every year, but has not yet announced their nominees.
— Daily Staff Reporters Michael Sugerman and Kristen Fedor contributed to this report.