By By Maggie Cassidy, News Staff

The crickets are chirping.
In the second Student Government Association (SGA) presidential debate this week, Senator Matt Soleyn squared off last night against Vice President for Student Services Ryan Fox on issues like sustainability and university transparency.
But in both last night’s debate and Monday’s, SGA had a difficult time extending its audience past its own members.
The Husky Energy Action Team (HEAT) hosted the first debate of the season Monday in the Behrakis Health Sciences Center, where a reporter counted 56 people in attendance. According to senate roll call, 42 of those people were SGA members. HEAT Director of Marketing and Public Relations Dan Abrams said seven audience members represented his organization.
Last night, about two dozen students ‘- including many SGA members ‘- stayed for the entirety of the debate, which was hosted solely by SGA at the freshman quad. Many students passed by as they left Stetson East.
SGA Vice President for Student Affairs Erin Pritchard said attendance could have been better.
‘I do wish there were more students there,’ she said last night.
Soleyn noticed the low turnout as well.
‘I think the attendance was dismal,’ he said.
SGA President Rob Ranley said that while ‘there’s always room for improvement’ in attendance numbers, he was happy with how the debates were going, particularly relative to last year’s campaign season, which was plagued by grievances and an attempt to block a nomination.
He said SGA was using ‘standard’ methods of getting the word out, including announcements at senate, club cards, Facebook group messages and e-mails to organizations.
‘There were a lot of kinks in the process last year, so if we have a smooth campaign this year, we’ll be able to focus more on getting the word out earlier next year,’ he said.
Despite the low turnout, Soleyn and Fox spent a large amount of time debating issues like sustainability. While both candidates said sustainability was a priority in their platforms, Soleyn said yesterday it is the responsibility of the students to come to the university with demands for renewable energy ‘- not the other way around.
The candidates also questioned each other’s administrative methodology, with Fox accusing Soleyn of being inefficient by trying to satisfy every student’s needs instead of looking at the student body as a whole.
‘I don’t think we can make everyone happy all the time,’ Fox said, noting that inefficiencies could cause more harm to other projects. ‘A decision just needs to be made and we need to move on.’
Likewise, Fox said not all information used in decision-making processes could be immediately available to the student body at-large because it would tie up the process.
Soleyn, on the other hand, said that if an issue needs more time to be looked at, it should be given that time, and said he would demand transparency in all SGA transactions. He accused Fox of not being a voice of the students.
SGA should give ‘every individual student the best experience they possibly can have,’ Soleyn said, later adding, ‘If [students] want to stay in the room until four in the morning [to debate an issue], let them stay.’