Members of YOUnited Give Insight on Recent Campaign

Imagine attending organization’s meetings, talking with group leaders, giving interviews to the press, debating other tickets, and painting banners all on less than five hours of sleep while also dealing with the stresses of a regular student’s life. 


Although one might mistake these for the activities that the Romney and Obama campaigns engage in, this was the reality of members of the University of Georgia Student Government Association’s recent YOUnited campaign.

Kevin “Femi” Brinson, campus liaison, and Jenny Grifenhagen, treasurer, were both interviewed Sunday night at the Tate Center to discuss not only their activities as a part of YOUnited, but also to shed light on the strategy and politics that were involved with running their campaign.

Both made clear that it was the message of YOUnited’s presidential candidate, Sean Malone, about connecting with students on a personal level and coalescing the campus, that drew each of them to want to become involved.

Brinson, a sophomore finance and management double major, was actually approached by some of the other tickets to help out, but he identified better with Malone’s message “of giving back to the people.”

The YOUnited campaign strategy was unorthodox because it specifically targeted multicultural organizations that in most SGA elections, fail to receive significant attention from the major tickets, Brinson said.

“When we found out only 4 percent of campus voted last year, I made the bold statement of saying let’s go after the other 96 percent,” Grifenhagen, the junior advertising major, explained.

Even though two members of the three-member ticket are a part of Greek organizations, the campaign went against the conventional strategy of targeting the important Greek vote with the hopes that it would be split amongst the four tickets, giving no one ticket a clear advantage, Grifenhagen said.

Instead, YOUnited concentrated on personal connections with organizations like the NAACP to get informal endorsements, which Brinson acknowledged, “It was kind of difficult, but what we tried to do was have people involved in different organizations reach out to their lower divisions on a personal level.”

Although the campaign hoped to bring a fresh new attitude to SGA, it was the media, like the Red & Black newspaper, that gave them the title of the “outsider” ticket, due to their lack of SGA members on the ticket, the pair both said.

“We did want to be an external ticket, but at the same time, we wanted to show that we do know what we’re doing if we are getting into SGA. So that was a part of getting our public message out and making sure people knew that we had experience, but that they knew that we were different,” Brinson explained.


 “Our strategy was SGA is a good vehicle, but needs new drivers. We don’t want to change the vehicle; we just want to change the culture within it,” the finance and management double major elaborated.

Although the pair said YOUnited kept a positive, upbeat message about unifying the campus, they were “shocked” with some of the negative attacks from other rival tickets, which they felt mirrored politicians on the national level.

“I didn’t realize how negative it would be because some of the comments were towards YOUnited members they had worked with before,” Brinson admitted. “I was kinda disappointed and kinda shocked, but I guess that is the nature of the beast when it gets so competitive and people are so fired up about a cause.”

Although Grifenhagen said these negative attacks were effective and might even be a necessary part of a winning strategy, she wouldn’t have changed YOUnited’s decision to not engage in the negative antics.

"I think 100 percent of the time I would rather stick to my morals and go about it that way and make real relationships with people and not win, then go the “effective” dirty politics route.”