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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The SGA elections are being held this week, with several positions up for grabs. Literally.
This year, out of the nine offices that will be on the ballot, only two of them: Student Representative to the Board of Trustees and Senator of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will have more than one person’s name on the ballot.
This means that six of the positions have already been decided, without the bother of a single vote being cast. One position, Senator of Education and Human Services, has no candidate running.
Normally collegiate newspapers seize upon opportunities such as this to bemoan the “downfall of activism” or to proclaim students to be “apathetic” and “uncaring,” affecting the pose of some old geriatric shaking his fist in the air and complaining about “kids these days.”
Well, we are going to take a slightly different tact this time:
Don’t care about student government? Good!
Don’t think you could handle the job? You’re probably right!
Don’t plan on voting? Well who needs ya!
We’re not saying this to be mean, we’re only trying to make a point: if you are not interested in student government, or any government for that matter, don’t participate. We’ve already seen national, state and local elections degenerate into YouTube driven, catch-word spitting, dirt-digging popularity contests. This is due in large part to voters who are uninterested in the platforms of their candidates, and would rather have them boiled down into a handy list of descriptors: liberal, conservative, flip-flopper, war hero, inexperienced, soft on crime, soft on terrorism, soft on fabrics. Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the picture.
An election only achieves its goal of electing the most qualified representative of a constituency if that constituency is knowledgeable of their candidates.
If you plan to vote in the SGA election, but you’re only voting for a person because they are your buddy, or they lived down the hall from you freshman year, or because they have great shoes or any other reason not related to their ability to represent you, then please, do everyone a favor: don’t vote!
If you want to run for a Student Leadership position, but are only doing so to pad your resume or because you think it’ll be fun, then please reconsider your decision.
The campus needs good student leaders now more than ever. What we don’t need are people that rode into their positions because they are more socially popular or because they are want to list SGA as another bullet point on a resume.
