As the ten-day student furlough commonly called spring break dwindles, students are dreading the onset of part two of the semester, The Racquet is going into its home stretch for the year, and the Student Association is bracing for its annual election season.
This is perhaps not the right time to speculate (or announce) who is running, but we can share some observations about the always needlessly dramatic elections from the recent past--elections that sometimes seem more like children slinging mudpies in a quasi-adult university sandbox.
The elections of 2008 marked the effective end of a Fred Ludwig-Bjorn Bergman administration that brought its own share of great achievements and political drama in the preceding school year, but those elections were also marred by a lawsuit. Pitting the student election commissioner against the losing party, the complaint alleged that all computers are "polling places." You see, students vote online for all Student Senate positions, and the rules barred campaigning within 100 feet of any polling place. See the reasoning?
Even way back in 2008, computers were ubiquitous on this campus. So, no. We don't get it either. It seems more like throwing dirt in a tantrum.
Last spring's round of drama...er, elections, which elected the replacements for the Derek Kockler and Kyle O'Brien administration, brought complaints that one party began campaigning before they were technically allowed. The complaint originated with a political hack working for one of the parties, but it's another example of naughty children taking lessons from misbehaved adults like Rahm Emanuel and Karl Rove.
The same political drama, pandering, and talking out of both sides of the mouth that color national politics also dirty the Student Senate elections every spring. The mechanisms of the sandbox/playground in which most of our quasi-adult decisions are isolated prevent bad calls from harming the outside world.
But be warned, outside world. Students these days take their hints from the grown-ups they see practicing "gotcha" politics, mudslinging, disingenuous pandering, and outright lying, though, they'll deny it (with their fingers crossed behind their backs).
Keep it clean.
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