On Friday, The Daily Texan Editorial Board interviewed each team of candidates running for Student Government president and vice president. The following quotes are from our interview with executive alliance candidates John Lawler and Terrence Maas.

“We would like to create a student neighborhoods alliance to advocate on behalf of student renters who are usually pretty helpless…”
— Maas on how he would increase the influence of student renters.

“There’s just a mindset here on the UT campus, and whenever it comes, especially on the state level, for debating or lobbying for our issues, we simply go in with just a UT mindset. … We don’t want to see our tuition increase, which, of course, the root of that is is we don’t want to see cuts to higher education funding. Well that’s a universal issue.”
— Lawler on the need for uniting college students across the state when lobbying the Legislature for higher education funding.

“I have a very strong record of fighting guns being brought on this campus both in Student Government and also lobbying at the Texas Legislature.”
— Lawler describing his position against concealed carry on campus.

“Unfortunately what happens is you get a program that goes on auto-pilot, and I fear that’s what happened with TPAC. … If we want to see any substantial change in the way tuition is set here on this campus, this next year is the year we should be focusing on.”
— Lawler on how to address rising tuition costs next year, a non tuition-setting year. Lawler said he and Maas believe students on TPAC should be democratically elected and that meetings should be open to the public.

“The biggest issue for most students, which is who we’re representing, is very simple and is very universal, and it is the pocketbook. People are going to be facing higher costs in the current economic situation, and that is obviously very hard on a lot of people. As an out-of-state student, I would know.”
— Maas on the biggest issue facing the University next year.