Debates highlight Civic Awareness Week

This is Civic Awareness Week at Utah State University and efforts are being made to get students more active in community affairs, including politics. Associated Students of Utah State University Vice President, Spencer Lee, says activities are planned all week that will hopefully get more students involved in community affairs.Two debates highlight the week and are being held on campus prior to the November 3rd elections. The first comes today at 12:30 p.m. in the Taggart Student Center Ballroom where candidates for Logan City Council will debate.The candidates are Holly Daines, Dean Quayle, Tony Wegener and Steven Stokes. On Friday, also at 12:30 p.m. in the ballroom, candidates for mayor will debate. Those candidates are incumbent mayor Randy Watts and Mike Morrill.Historically there is a very low voter turnout among university students and Lee admits there is a lot of apathy on the USU campus. “That apathy comes from a feeling of, ‘everyone is of the same political orientation so we can’t really do anything to change it,'” Lee said on KVNU’s Crosstalk Show Tuesday.”I think students feel like there isn’t enough of us to really influence an election,” he said. “And to be quite honest, if we got every eligible student to register, and they all went out and voted, we could swing the city elections, we could swing the race for state senator, for state representative.”Lee says more students may vote this year because there seems to be a lot of interest in two of the issues: park strips and landlord licensing which both affect students.

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