Editorial : Student Association elections, candidates poorly promoted
Starting Monday, Nov. 8, elections for Student Association president and comptroller will begin.
SA distributes the student activity fee and acts as the voice of the student body. Ultimately, it is the most important undergraduate student organization on campus. SA should be concerned about its image among the student body. If it wants more students to get involved, it needs to show students why they should want to get involved.
There is only one candidate running for each position this year: Neal Casey for president and Jeff Rickert for comptroller. Barring a last-minute write-in candidate, both Casey and Rickert will be elected next week. But despite this certainty, SA dropped the ball on promoting elections, and the candidates missed a valuable opportunity to showcase their platforms.
Casey campaigned on the platform of ‘Putting Students First’ and turning SA into a more result-based organization, using social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook. He also distributed fliers around campus and spoke with some student organizations. But despite these efforts, most students remain unaware and uninformed about the election. A member of SA for almost two years, Casey has developed concrete ideas but did a poor job of presenting them.
Since at least 2006, less than 25 percent of the student body has voted in SA elections. For an organization with so much power, students should be more concerned. An uncontested election was the perfect opportunity for SA to inform students about the organization and encourage students — as it has in the past — to vote next week.
One student outside of SA attended Wednesday night’s discussion with Casey and Rickert. With the elections being uncontested, there was no means for a debate. But SA still had the option of gathering a student panel, something it has done in past elections. This would have at least constructed a dialogue rather than having the two candidates speak to a relatively empty room.
Casey and Rickert are not just campaigning for themselves but also for the organization they aim to lead. In addition, SA failed to promote the importance of students voting for their representatives. This turned out to be an exceptionally quiet election season in which both SA and the candidates missed a valuable opportunity to inform students about who they are and what they plan to do.
