For the last several weeks, the candidates for student trustee have been duking it out in the form of campus-wide flier campaigns, student organization meetings, official debates and chalked sidewalks galore. But come midnight tonight, the power is in your hands. You deserve the best person for the job. That person is Katie Dunne.

Katie is the most knowledgeable candidate by leaps and bounds when it comes to the student issues facing the Board of Trustees. She has served as one of only two undergraduate representatives on the UC Senate Executive Committee – tackling everything from educational policy to student discipline – as well as chairing the ISS Student Life Committee, organizing the ISS Sexual Health Awareness Campaign, and serving the community through Volunteer Illini Projects. No other candidate running to represent you can boast this level of experience and dedication.

Katie will staunchly oppose any future punitive overreaching by the administration as it seeks to impose illogical restrictions such as the threat of expulsion on Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day – restrictions that will merely make the day more notorious and less safe. Although Chancellor Herman appears to disagree, Katie feels that a campus of legal adults is capable of making responsible decisions without parental notification coming into play.

As the only woman on the ballot, Katie understands firsthand the issues facing roughly half of this campus. The HPV vaccine currently costs $120, a price Katie is determined to reduce (without this vaccine, 80 percent of women are projected to have HPV by the time they are 50.) She will fight to keep birth control free for students, and she supports the expansion of Saferides to off-campus locations.

Katie’s vision on academic issues is equally impressive. She advocates additional funding for study abroad programs and scholarships and for moving toward Indiana University’s model for eliminating sales taxes on textbooks. Katie also believes that we must bolster our graduate student award packages with increased pay and more substantial health care packages so that UIUC can continue to attract the best and brightest.

Katie wants to improve student seating for basketball and football, and while she’s not the only candidate with this goal, she is the only one with an actual plan. Katie would use the substantial athletic fee that students currently pay as leverage in negotiating with the Athletic Department. If we aren’t given priority seating, she would lower the fee. She means business.

Above all, our student trustee must be committed to representing a very broad constituency: the entire student body. Katie has been endorsed by the presidents of both the College Democrats and the College Republicans, reflecting faith in her leadership from students across the political spectrum.

Contrast this with her opponents, who each represent nothing more than a narrow constituency, not a real cross-section of this campus. She’s not beholden to pi kappa alpha, or “the pikes” (yes, those pikes) – that’s their president, Mike Cashman. She’s not beholden to a few minority groups and those groups alone – that’s Chime Asonye, although he’s offered them little more than lip service. Katie actually paved the way in issuing a report recommending a civilian police review board to confront racial profiling and police abuse. And she’s certainly not beholden to far right extremists – that role belongs to Paul Schmitt, whose 100 percent Jerry Falwell-approved values led him to boycott meetings of the ISS Student Life Committee after he failed to prevent their condom distribution campaign.

If the only issue you care about is the Chief, then you should write in “Chief Illiniwek.” No matter what my colleague Jake Vial says, no candidate can bring back the Chief, and for the record, none of them has an anti-Chief position anyway. Look it up. Paul is simply trying to ride your sincere grief all the way to an insincere victory. Jake Vial knows this, but he is letting his friendship with Paul chip away at his respect for the truth.

Katie is in this race for the right reasons, and I am proud to say that I have been actively supporting her as she fights to represent you. Let’s get this Dunne.