Candidates for the 1998-99 Student Senate discussed off-campus housing, meal plans and improving the senate's visibility at "Meet Your Candidates," a forum sponsored by the Residence Action Council last night.

Candidates from the Realizing Excellence and Achievement through Leadership, Becoming Empowered Students Together and the Now Everyone Wins parties addressed a small group of students about campus issues in preparation for Wednesday's Student Senate elections.

Shannon Bibbee, vice presidential candidate for the REAL party, questioned why students who do not belong to the Greek community cannot move off campus their sophomore year.

Allowing sophomores to live off campus would alleviate the university's need for residence-hall renovations and would create a demand for more and better off-campus housing for students, he said.

But Jason Barron, treasurer candidate for the BEST party, said he supported the two-year campus residence requirement. Permitting sophomores to move off campus would not increase the market for housing, but would ruin it by driving up rent costs, he said.

Senate candidates also discussed ways the university could better cater to those students who dine on campus.

Darien Moss, REAL party presidential candidate, said she supports meal plan reforms to give students more flexibility.

"Students should not be paying for meals they did not eat," she said.

Seth Greenfest, NEW party candidate for South Green Representative, said he wants students to be involved in making changes to dining hall menus.

"I'd like to see the dining halls more ethnically and religiously oriented," he said.

Some candidates also expressed interest in taking measures to improve students' daily lives.

Eleni Zulia, Tony Eufinger and Upendri Gunasekera, executive candidates for the NEW party, said the party supports increasing student services and improving relations between students and the community.

Other candidates rallied for more student input in the senate's activities.

Student Senate needs to get more students involved in its events, REAL's Bibbee said.

"We have a lot of students here, but they're all students who already are involved in the process," he said. "There literally should be dozens of students at this forum."

While publicity is important, "it's difficult to get the message out," BEST's Barron said. "We can spend a lot of time publicizing or a lot of time doing."