On Wednesday, the Technician hosted the Student Body President debate, and we were thoroughly impressed by both candidates and their running mates. The full debate can be seen on our website, but for those of you who don’t have the time to watch it, the debate was formatted as follows: Each candidate and his or her running mate worked together to answer a series of questions, some of which were generated by the Technician’s editorial board, and some of which were generated by other students or audience members.

Going into tonight, we had planned to use this editorial to announce which SPB/SBVP team won the debate—and don’t worry, we still will—but know that it was close. In fact, it was so close that the editorial board didn’t have an easy time picking a winner. So rather than talk about who won and why he or she won, we decided to highlight what we thought each SPB/SBVP pair did particularly well and what we thought they could’ve done better. 

The Highs:

• Both teams worked well together. 
• Both vice presidential candidates established themselves as essential assets to their running mates.
• Propst demonstrated sincerity in her answers.
• Mau answered questions concisely and often cited specific examples.
• Riley showed class when he supported Propst after an audience member asked her a particularly pointed question. 
• Do showed fortitude when he also jumped in to defend Propst.

The Lows: 

• Propst’s answers were sometimes repetitive.
• When asked how he will support diversity at N.C. State, Mau relied heavily on clichés and provided a nebulous answer.
• At times Propst seemed to rely too heavily on Do.
• Though Mau’s answers were generally well put together, they sometimes felt detached or disingenuous. 

As you can see, the good outweighed the bad, and we thought both candidates and their running mates did an excellent job, but at the end of the day, every debate has a winner, and we at the Technician think Mau and Riley were victorious. We don’t think, however, that this is by any means an accurate indicator of who will perform best in office, and this is not to be mistaken for an official endorsement of either ticket. For that, you’ll have to read Tuesday’s edition of the Technician. But until then, we’d like to encourage all of our readers to continue to follow our election coverage, and we’d like to thank both candidates, their running mates and everyone who came to Wednesday’s debate.