Well, maybe there’s another problem in this year’s elections. While it is great that there are two highly qualified slates for SU exec positions, there is absolutely no competition for Senate, Treasury, or Class Council seats. This is something that cannot continue in the future.

Last year, this section termed the SU elections “a joke,” and encouraged students to vote for their favorite write-ins instead of the actual candidates. While we will not go that far this year because of the competitive exec elections, students will have to resort to write-ins if they want a complete ballot. For the 26 Senate seats, there are a grand total of seven candidates, all but one of them in Arts and Sciences. Treasury did better, but still, only 10 people are running for the 19 available seats. At least the Class Councils will have a complete ballot, but there is no competition there either.

All sorts of excuses can be made for the lack of candidates in the Senate and Treasury elections. Anyone planning on going abroad cannot run, and that certainly eliminates some prospective candidates. Maybe students are happy with the jobs their respective Class Councils have done, and are not running to show their support. Susan Land, a current Senator, Neil Patel, and Aaron Robinson, each Treasury Representatives, are running for higher office, and hopefully will continue their exemplary work in their current positions if not elected as execs. But these are not suitble reasons for having an incomplete ballot.

Blame for this problem does not lay with Student Union. SU has done everything they can to publicize the elections. They have consistently been urging people to run in the “SUpdate” as well as their various other advertising outlets. Instead, the general apathy of the student body is at fault here. Every undergrad gives money to SU as part of his or her tuition, but it seems like only a few people actually care what that money is used for. Everything from WILD to the swing dance club is funded by SU. Recently, the Senate has supported the use of closed circuit televisions to try to enhance security. SU deals with issues like this all year. These are issues that affect everyone on campus, and every undergrad pays for it through the activities fee. Is it really true that only 32 people (who don’t spend most of their time writing articles for a certain on-campus newspaper) care about issues like this?

It’s a sad reality that the most competitive elections tend to be the race for CS40 exec spots. What is sad about this is that the reward for winning these seats is free (or close to it) housing, in addition to running CS40. The issue of compensation for SU and CS40 execs will be tackled at another time. But it is impossible to believe so few people either do not have the time to devote to SU or just care so little how their activities fee is used that they do not run. This year’s elections may not be a joke, but they are a little funny.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.