Late Tuesday night, Student Government Association presidential candidate Nicholas Rossetti announced he would no longer be on the ballot. Wednesday morning, Rossettti could be found at various places around campus with anti-SGA propaganda and encouraging passing students not to vote in the election.
The Chronicle caught up with Rossetti and the other presidential candidates. (Audio clips posted on the right.)
Nick Rossetti
(The first two quotes are part of his April Fools joke, Rossetti said.)
“Look, my message is this: Look, turn your head. Look the other way. Our problems are going to fix themselves. Why should you care? The cool kids at Quinnipiac University don’t want to vote. It’s a Quinnipiac tradition. We must remain apathetic, because if we don’t, all of our traditions will be dead.”
“SGA, they sit in that room all day playing checkers and four-square. It doesn’t work.”
“Basically, I’m still passionate about what I want to do and I’m still going to go for a rep spot where I can actually accomplish the same things I wanted to in the first place. But the difference is realistically I knew that my political platform, which is reform of SGA, isn’t popular enough to clearly win. So, out of the next two out of Dean and Lou, I do believe that Lou should win. I believe he’s the harder worker. Instead of detracting votes from Lou, I removed myself from the presidential ballot to focus on the rep spot. I do think that even though we don’t see eye-to-eye politically, Lou is a hard work, and if somebody has to win it’s him, that he gets the job done.”
Louis Venturelli
“I thought Nick was a very strong candidate. Now I see it, I know he threw his support behind me, so I’m hoping that it’ll give me a little edge. But I’m still confident that the two candidates running that are currently, myself and Dean, are going to put up a good fight. We will put up a good fight and the election will be close. I’m kind of excited.”
“Nick is an interesting figure on campus. He does what he’s very passionate about doing. I think it’s interesting that he ran for president and then is now saying that SGA is a waste of time. I know that he’s passionate about the organization and he knows the potential of the student government, so hopefully in my administration we can have his support. That’s something that I’m looking forward to doing, making sure that students don’t feel that way. I think that Nick is a man of his word. We’ll see what he does about it.”
Dean Czerwonka provided a written statement.
“This whole process has been a very tedious and stressful one. My team and I have been focusing on spreading my name and message 24/7. Unfortunately, I have not been able to pay to much attention to my opponents or the media attention that our campaigns have been getting. Being out and about all day on campus, you were the first to inform me about Nick’s decision. I’d like to take this quick opportunity to wish him well in his new endeavor. I feel that he was in fact a great candidate for the position of President of the Student Government Association and I hope if elected this year he can represent the class of 2011. Again, best of luck to Nick.”
Transcribed by Andrew Fletcher.
