UTEC Candidate Forum
UTEC has it all over the rest of us in terms of spirit and turnout. There must have been 150 people there last night. They also seem more adept at technology and despite some glitches were able to intersperse videos and music into the agenda. They had a unique format where they paired the councilors and each pair had to answer the same question. So, there were only nine questions in all, but they were good ones. In between there were cool teen performances of rap songs and hip-hop and poetry. As one councilor said, “UTEC rules!”
Darius Mitchell was in his element and the most comfortable of all those present (“Is UTEC in the house?” he challenged and got the crowd going). Richard Douglas was preaching to the choir, but managed to keep up the momentum he had gained at the UTL forum where he impressed a lot of folks with his closing statement. Most of the candidates rose gamely to the occasion and the spirited audience was polite enough to clap for all of them – even the ones who didn’t support or seem to understand some of their issues.
I learned that UTEC started out with one volunteer - now they have a budget of $1 million dollars, a full and part-time staff and over 1000 teen members. What they need now is a building to house all this dedication and energy. Their fundraiser, "Building our Dream," will be held on Dec. 8 at Lenzi's. I hope people will make an effort to come out for UTEC.
Darius Mitchell was in his element and the most comfortable of all those present (“Is UTEC in the house?” he challenged and got the crowd going). Richard Douglas was preaching to the choir, but managed to keep up the momentum he had gained at the UTL forum where he impressed a lot of folks with his closing statement. Most of the candidates rose gamely to the occasion and the spirited audience was polite enough to clap for all of them – even the ones who didn’t support or seem to understand some of their issues.
I learned that UTEC started out with one volunteer - now they have a budget of $1 million dollars, a full and part-time staff and over 1000 teen members. What they need now is a building to house all this dedication and energy. Their fundraiser, "Building our Dream," will be held on Dec. 8 at Lenzi's. I hope people will make an effort to come out for UTEC.
1 Comments:
My mindset going into the forum was that I wanted to set the tone. I was pretty lucky to get the first seat. From studying the UTEC Forum from 2003, I noticed that the incumbents had monetary figures previously written down. I wanted to eliminate their ability to throw statistics around to impress the crowd, and instead, force them into taking a social approach.
Personally, I feel as if I sacrificed my ability to persuade the indoor crowd in order to allow the chance for other candidates to make untimely statements on live TV.
Also, I figured that from all the positive responses that I had received from the UTL Forum, I was in a good position to start using tactics of attrition.
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