Keene State College alumnus and current councilor at large for the city of Keene Kris Roberts is running for Mayor.
Roberts attended KSC in the 70s then again in the early 2000s after serving 25 years in the Marines. Along with Roberts’s educational and military service, he is also a state representative for New Hampshire and has been a city councillor for seven years. Roberts said that one of the main reasons he wants to be mayor is to reverse the negative reputations the college and city have developed over the past few years.
“I’m proud of the fact that I went to Keene State College and I think it’s extremely important that both the city and college, I’ll call it a marriage, have to work together to protect the students. You [ the students] are spending a lot of money and doing a lot of work and you don’t want to have that reputation,” Roberts said. He continued, “The city and the college have to get married, yeah they’re going to have some bumps but they realize for the better of the marriage some are going to have to give in and you’re going to have to work together.”
Another key point in his campaign is getting students involved with local politics and if elected would channel his roots at the college. “I think with my connection through Keene State over the years, I would be forceful but willing to be more than be cooperative and work with the college leadership to get the things done that we need to get done,” Roberts said.
Roberts said that part of this plan includes providing more information and opportunities for students to get more directly involved.
Kendall Pope / Managing Executive Editor
“I would explain to the students how important it is to not just get involved with national politics and who gets elected president because that has little effect on them what’s really important is what do you do in local politics…You can voice your ideas to the president or someone else but it’s not going to be the exact same way you said it. You can sit down with the mayor and voice your opinions but still some of the stuff is going to get lost in translation. So, like I said, if I got mayor I would push to have more student involvement in local politics and then I would ask the college president and say ‘Hey why can’t we come up with some plan where the students can do it as independent studies or some of the other stuff’ and I think that would work and be great,” Roberts said.
KSC senior and Student Body President Bobby Graham said he supports these ideas.
“I’ve been saying for a long time that I think there should be more student collaboration with citizens, especially local leaders. We come to college not only to get better jobs in the future but to find ourselves and find out how to be citizens in society and no one can teach us how to do that [other] than citizens themselves. So I fully support that agenda and I think that nothing but good things could come of that between citizens and student, especially in a town that has had so many issues between community relations and college relations. I definitely think students are going to be the catalyst that really find a solution to all of this in the end,” Graham said. Roberts said that if the college and city want to have a working relationship it shouldn’t be the mayor and the president talking about these issues and that there should be one or two college students on the city council and committees who can be the voice of the students.
“You [the student] can say no ‘This is what’s actually happening this is what we want.’ I think that’s important,” Roberts said. He continued that there are what students would primarily call “old” people on the city council and it would be beneficial for the community to have college students serve as city councilors.
“You guys [students] have different needs and wants than we do. Having students on city council forces the city to answer you and your questions,” Roberts said.
Roberts gave the example that a student councilor may notice that a store is selling alcohol to underage students and could bring those concerns to the city council about what to do to fix underage drinking and the city would have to do something about it. KSC Professor and Chair of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Dr. C. Paul Vincent, who taught Roberts during his second term at KSC said that Robert’s past experiences always enriched class discussions.
“He’s [Roberts] got a deep passion I think he has a number of very good ideas, he certainly has the intellect to do the job and he’s been committed to public service quite clearly for a number of years,” Vincent said.
Kendall can be contacted at kpope@kscequinox.com