Last night the Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney visited campus and spoke at Everitt Hall about the coming election and his and his party’s causes.

“What makes me the best candidate in this race is the ideas I’m running on, the ideas of the Green Party,” he said. These ideas are “ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy, nonviolence and social justice,” he added.

He said that the Green Party is a party of political activists and encouraged a movement to return the government to one “by the people and for the people.”

Whitney said that he is running on a platform of four core values: “clean environment, clean government, healthy people and a healthy economy.”

He said that the school system needs to be overhauled, due to Illinois having some of the most unequal K-12 schools in the country. He said that this is “a disgrace and not smart economics.”

Whitney said that, if elected governor, he would put more emphasis on higher education.

“Better funding for higher education is not just providing more loans and incentives, we need to reduce tuition and fees so that it’s more affordable and accessible,” he said.

Whitney said that he was a supporter of State Bill 750, which would alter property and income taxes and generate $9 billion in new revenue. He said that $2.2 billion would go to K-12 schools, $310 million to higher education and $2.5 billion would go back to property tax relief. He said that the people want and need a more fiscally responsible government.

“He provides a new voice and offers actual solutions, and he wants to do more for the university,” said Tom Abram, who is running for state representative in the 103rd district on the Green Party ticket.

“(Whitney) talks about the issues while the two others (Rod Blagojevich and Judy Baar Topinka) are attacking each other,” Abram said. He added that he thinks that Blagojevich and Topinka, in accusing each other of corruption, are both correct.

He said “voters should vote for a candidate who’s not corrupt.”

Eric Uskali, president of Campus Greens and junior in Engineering, said that Whitney is “a very strong candidate and a very well-spoken and powerful speaker.”

Uskali said that he agrees with Whitney on almost all of the issues and found this very refreshing for a voter.

“I really like his stance on energy, specifically an emphasis on sustainable energy,” he added. He said that more than 50 percent of University funding comes from the tuition of students who are in debt and that Whitney would help to reverse that trend.