Touting their experience both within the ASSU and prior to coming to Stanford, ASSU presidential candidate Ryan Peacock and his vice presidential pick, Jonathan Bakke, are running to rein in the executive office’s agenda and “change the status quo.”

“We think there is definite need for changes to the status quo, and having been involved with the ASSU in different aspects of it and having a lot of leadership coming in to Stanford, we think we could bring fresh ideas,” Peacock said. “We’ve seen good things happen in the last few years but we’ve also seen a lot of things that aren’t necessarily as positive as they should have been.”

Peacock and Bakke — also the first doctoral students to run together for executive in ASSU history — believe their backgrounds on the legislative side and Nominations Commission, respectively, are a “nice marriage of skills,” Bakke said. Peacock is serving his second term on the Graduate Student Council (GSC), while Bakke spent two years on the University Committee on Research before serving as Nominations Commission chair this year. Bakke was also elected vice president of Stanford’s chemical engineering action committee.

“We’ve been involved with the ASSU pretty much as much as the other candidates have, but we do also have the experience from completely different systems at other universities,” Peacock said.

Both members were active in student government when they were undergraduates: Peacock was the president of his residential college at Rice in his senior year and Bakke served on the Tulane Engineering Student Council for two years.

The two met in spring of 2006 at the recruiting weekend for the chemical engineering doctoral program.

Aiming for a more equal partnership than current ASSU President David Gobaud’s favored style, the pair is pushing an agenda of a more manageable size than the wide-ranging platform of Gobaud, a coterminal student in computer science. The slate is instead focusing on advocating for students and internal reforms; student-initiated programs, supported through an executive discretionary grant program, would tackle smaller issues, they said.

“One of the things we really want to focus on [is], ‘What are the core things the execs should be doing?’” Peacock said. “And that is advocating on behalf of the student body to the administration and then making sure you are facilitating student groups.”

“If you’re spending all that time managing those people, how much time are you really getting to focus on the important task at hand?” Peacock added, noting the diminishing returns of a large cabinet.

Peacock and Bakke shied from the notion that the executive should play a strong oversight role for the Undergraduate Senate and GSC.

“I don’t think the executive’s role is to tell either of the legislative bodies how to operate with their funds or with their policies,” Bakke said. “But there should be checks and balances.”

The slate remains supportive of the headway ASSU has made this year despite a few controversial issues, particularly in regard to progress in finance reform, ethics reform and public financing for elections.

“I think the ASSU realizes it’s an important institution and recognizes its independence from the administration,” Peacock said. “But more things need to be done.”

The slate received the endorsement of the Stanford Review editorial board on Monday.