The eight UOSA presidential and vice presidential candidates met under one roof Thursday evening in Walker Center to answer student questions and talk about reforming UOSA.

The four pairs running for president and vice president, respectively, include: Jess Eddy and Jay Kumar, Ally Glavas and Zac McCullock, Nick Harrison and John Surles, and Franz Zentano and Cory Lloyd.

About 30 to 40 people attended the discussion, ranging from current UOSA members to dorm residents.

The forum was hosted by the center staff and the faculty-in-residence, Josh Landis, associate international and area studies professor.

Landis said as a faculty member, he was impressed how good the candidates were.

“I think this forum will create momentum and energy in students and let them see who the candidates are and go out and tell people,” he said.

A major topic of discussion was how each duo plans to change UOSA to make it more effective for the student body. Everyone agreed reform was necessary but differed on approaches.

“Most people are not aware that they are a member of UOSA,” Eddy said. “Everyone in this room is a member of UOSA by attending this university.”

Eddy and Kumar said they intend to focus on increasing voter participation and on improving the quality of educating by creating a new center to bring students and faculty together to learn about topics and get advice.

Academics also are a focus of Glavas’s and McCullock’s campaign, who said they plan to revise the academic advising process to become more efficient.

“If you aren’t advised properly, you can lose thousands more than you would have and things can get messy,” Glavas said. “We always hear about how great the advisers are in [the School of International and Area Studies]; what are they doing right that everyone else isn’t?”

They want to start an adviser evaluation problem to find out what advisers are doing wrong and to make sure advisers in each college are getting the resources they need.

Harrison and Surles emphasized bringing together everyone who has a say in the university — students, faculty, administration, alumni and donors — with a new University Communications Council.

“It’s easy to want to eliminate student government when all they can do is get condom machines and bike racks,” Harrison said. “You can get a job at the Physical Plant and do the same thing.”

Other universities, such as Princeton University and Brown University, have a similar council to that proposed by Harrison, which would allow all stakeholders to bring ideas together and decide as a whole what the university should do.

For their platform, Zentano and Lloyd talked about their involvement with campus and what it means to them.

To help students, Zentano said he wants to create a better Web site with all student organizations, as well as personal testimonies from students.

Nick Lopez, multidisciplinary studies sophomore, said he knew a lot about the candidates and their campaigns, but wanted to see them in person.

“I was mainly assessing character and presentation,” Lopez said. “I got pretty much all I needed to know from this.”