Luke Dotto was seated alone in the row of chairs facing the audience which were reserved for senate candidates at the open forum held on Tuesday in the Concourse.
Dotto is an acclaimed senate candidate and was the only one who attended to take advantage of the candidates’ opportunity to engage in discourse with Laurier students.
“It’s a shame that nobody else here came to debate the issues,” Dotto commented. “And it’s a shame that very few people ran to begin with.”
The other candidates are Elias Eerikainen — who is also acclaimed — along with Zahra Sultani and Jazz Clement.
He also expressed his disappointment in the student population at Laurier for failing to recognise senate and student senators as important facets of the university.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “It’s clearly not a sexy position compared to the presidential and board of directors elections. Perhaps the problem is that … it’s not as visible on campus.”
According to Dotto, the senate considers the issues which students typically don’t see, but which are nevertheless important to their experience at Laurier.
Over the next few years, he explained, it will be responsible for making decisions that are going to, in a very large way, shift Laurier’s structure to create a different university than students have seen in the last ten years.
He continued, “All I can do is make sure that when I’m on the senate I’m the best student advocate possible to make up for the lack of open and quality discourse that’s taken place during the campaign.”
Dotto’s final thoughts were directed at his fellow candidates.
“I understand class restrictions, I understand if you have a paper due or if you have an important lecture,” he said. “But if you weren’t able to commit the time to something like the open forum, maybe you shouldn’t have committed your time to running in the election.”
