Alma Pacheco is the best choice for ASG president

Passion, presence and realistic goals: These are among some of the reasons that we at The Advocate are endorsing Alma Pacheco as ASG president.

Before we go more in depth about why Pacheco is our choice, let’s address the other candidates.

Jonathan Beaman is on the bottom for us. While it’s hard to ignore his ambitious goals, they don’t seem feasible. Buying the bookstore sounds like it could be possible, and promising, but on-site housing is not happening. And besides, housing is something that is not traditionally expected or needed of a community college, especially one in such an urban setting, and there is no way we can afford that kind of expense now.

It actually ended up being a hard decision between Pacheco and Kristin Werner.

Werner definitely has the most leadership experience; she was a branch manager at US Bank for seven years, among other things. That’s a pretty massive plus on her part, because she has plenty of professional job experience. And, just like Beaman, she seems very serious and honest about this position. The problem is that she isn’t very specific with her presidential goals. Her platform has three branches: community engagement, student life and diversity awareness. It’s just hard to grasp what those branches actually mean. During the debates, it was hard to nail down what some of her concrete goals were and how she wanted to go about them.

As opposed to Beaman and Werner, Pacheco’s goals seem realistic, clear and attractive.

One of her primary goals is to stage more frequent events. On-campus events have always given the college a lot of life and personality. It’s a great way to give students a break from the monotony of classes and studying. We think they’re great and like that Pacheco puts importance on them.

We also like Pacheco’s approach to getting students involved and educated on things outside of the classroom. She hopes to do more class visitations, or “class walks.” The other candidates talk about how they want to utilize the school’s texting and social media services. These tools are great (when actually used), but many students don’t care about that stuff and will probably never sign up for those methods of notifications. With class visits, you have the students right there to inform them. They may be somewhat intrusive to a class curriculum, but if done strategically, it shouldn’t be a big issue.

We have been seeing her flyers all over the campus and she has even visited a few of our classes. Her presence has definitely been quite noticeable (in a good way). This shows how much more aggressive she is with getting people’s attention, which is something we haven’t seen in the other candidates.

Something that should be put into consideration is her personal battle with cystic fibrosis. Her condition (unfortunately) worsened last year when she wanted to run for president, and she had to wait until this year. It may sound harsh, but what if she got sick again and we were to end up with Cristian Urzua, her running mate, as the president? We think he could get the job done.

However, her disorder brings positives to her candidacy: Because there is an air of uncertainty around her life and all those who struggle with this chronic disease, she has an unmatched drive to make every second count. And, as she was quoted in our profile of her last week, she hopes to leave a legacy of great work behind in this position.

Another possible argument against Pacheco is, unlike her running mates, she is not currently an ASG member. While she often coordinates with ASG as a member of SOAR and the MeCHA co-chair, she still doesn’t have the insider’s knowledge of being in ASG. That might result in a bit of a learning curve, especially since she will be ASG’s leader. Despite that, it could be good if someone outside of ASG’s mindset became the president. The last two Mt. Hood student body presidents were already members of ASG, so this may be a refreshing change.

There are a lot of other positives that we could stretch into another article as to why Pacheco is the best choice. But, overall, there is something that you can only determine with your naked eye.

During the debates, you could see the passion practically bursting out of her chest. She was breathless after every question, and raved about all the great services at Mt. Hood, naming them individually. She wants to nurture what we already have, rather than make unnecessary expansions. She gets specific, she gets in your face and she’s so dang charming.

The other candidates seem adequate, but we would feel most comfortable with Pacheco in the president’s seat next year.