At a minimum, each Virginia Tech student spends nearly three quarters of the year in Blacksburg. As a result, each and every one of us is uniquely tied not just to Tech, but also to the town of Blacksburg. Everything that happens in Blacksburg happens to us.
Downtown Blacksburg is where we spend our weekends, where we get our lunches and where we stroll in our free time. Although you will never see advertisements for local elections in the middle of Monday night football or between episodes of “So You Think You Can Dance,” this does not mean that these are unimportant elections. In fact, in recent years Blacksburg has come across several issues that could change the town radically. Most famous was a failed bid by large retailer, believed to be Wal-Mart, to build a big box store in Blacksburg at the expense of the beauty of our town. These issues are by no means resolved as Blacksburg is a burgeoning town that will continue to experience growing pains as it struggles to become a larger city while retaining its original class and character.
Nearly 70 percent of the population of Blacksburg is comprised either of students or people directly involved with the university. It is important that we the faculty, the students and the staff of Tech find a strong voice in our town council. This year we have a wonderful opportunity to elect several candidates who can give a voice to the citizens of our fine university. There are three candidates who are not only involved with the university but also have already taken active roles in our community.
Bryce Carter is an undergraduate student who is a senior at Tech and is heavily involved in community-oriented clubs. Recently, he was awarded the Gwin-Parker-Gwin Community Service Award for engaging students in their community. He is heavily involved in the Environmental Coalition and was one of the main coordinators for Power Shift, a conference created to support sustainable energy. While Carter is an undergraduate, he states he has fallen in love with Blacksburg and considers himself a permanent resident with plans to settle down here after graduation. One of his most interesting ideas includes starting a group called the “Student Advisory Committee” to empower students by interacting with the local government. This committee would be entirely made up of students and would work closely with the SGA to bring issues of interest to students to the town council. Furthermore, Carter is an avid supporter of the environment and intends to promote the infrastructure required to make and keep Blacksburg a bike-friendly town. Finally, Carter has been an advocate of improving downtown without turning it into the faceless, generic, sprawling suburbia that many growing cities have become.
Susan Anderson, another candidate, is an instructor in the mathematics department and has been a resident of Blacksburg since coming to Tech in 1980 to get her master’s degree. She has made a name for herself outside the council by being heavily involved in women’s issues and Amnesty International, and she is the faculty adviser for the student organizations representing these issues. She has been a powerful force in shaping our community through the town council since 2006. She has pushed for downtown revitalization projects, which were designed to
improve awareness of local products and venues such as the farmers market, the Lyric and the Stepping Out festival. Similarly, Anderson has pushed for growth that allows Blacksburg to expand while not losing the qualities that make it special.
Finally, Michael Sutphin is a writer for College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, a job he accepted after graduating from Tech in 2006. As a student he was a member of the LGBTA and pushed for SafeWatch, a Tech Web site to report and monitor harassment and discrimination of all kinds. Similar to Carter, Sutphin wants to increase student involvement by including students in the town’s liaison group with the university. Additionally, in an attempt to encourage small business growth, Sutphin wants to use Tech’s arts initiative to drive foot traffic to local businesses.
This year we have several interesting candidates, many of whom are heavily involved in the university and therefore in a unique position to represent the issues important to you. Each of these candidates has important ideas on how to grow Blacksburg responsibly. Since Blacksburg is a growing town, we need to take care of how it grows. This means electing people who not only share a sense of where we come from but where we should go.