Campus organization, UpTo TxWes, invited students to talk about their position on whether the government should make efforts to decrease spending or to increase taxes on citizens at the Jack Morton Business Acceleration Center on Thursday, Dec. 2.

Student participation was encouraged in both the open discussion style debate and a raffle for various prizes. The event was a success according to host Yamam Saheb, a junior finance and management major who is involved in various campus organizations, including UpTo Txwes.

“What’s really great about working with the Up To Us foundation is that they sponsor the events. So, they’ve given us $650 in funds, and they said, your purpose is to educate. So now we’re here, encouraging students to just have fun, faculty has been super encouraging as well, our own School of Business Dean even offered to come in and speak and be here today with us,” Saheb said.

Saheb was accompanied by Stella Thanh, an international student who helped her host the event. Thanh said she didn’t know too much about the event other than what Saheb had already told her but that she was willing to help from the start.

“This is a project that is going to benefit our school by educating people and it’s just like a fun event to gather people together. It was time consuming and with finals coming up, it was rough, but Yamam is great, she’s been doing all the work, and I’ve just been here to support her,” Thanh said.

Students who participated on either side of the event were invested in the conversation. Junior finance major Joseph Mays was a participant in the defense of the government increasing taxes and said the event was a nice, fun, entertaining, and informational experience.

“I thought it was pretty cool to hear each side say how they think either decreasing spending would help the economy or how increasing taxes would help. I personally think increasing the economic input helps the economic output, but it was interesting to see how they argued their side of decreasing spending, also increasing the economic output,” Mays said.

On the opposing team, in defense of the government decreasing spending, Junjie Dai is a graduate student in the education track. He said he felt really good about the debate because it helped him understand more about the topic.

“Well, for me, I learned in education about how different programs work, how different policies work, and I feel like if we can save money to help more, use the money in the right place, then we can benefit the government and even the country,” Dai said.

Along with the raffle that occurred at the event, Saheb mentioned that there would be three more gifts raffled online for students who could not attend the event. She said students would be entered to win by providing their stance about national debt on their personal Instagram stories. For more information, visit the Instagram page, @upto_txwes and learn about how your voice can make a difference.