Last Monday, the student body voted to elect Casey Dennis ’15 and Frank Cunningham ’16 to be our next Student Assembly president and vice president. For the record, I believe that Casey and Frank will do an excellent job. But I believe that many students who vote do so based on popularity or familiar names, not policies and agendas.
Like I did, you might have voted for one of your friends. He or she might have been the only candidate running who you personally knew, and so you voted for him or her. It makes sense, right? On a campus with over 4,000 undergraduate students, any given student probably knew only one or two of the candidates and, as a result, probably voted for that person. Even if you think that a certain candidate would be a good fit for the job, how are you supposed to know which candidate will be the best option out of everyone running? With the majority of voters not attending debates, we clearly don’t always make informed decisions when voting for Student Assembly.
Right now, the Assembly is a popularity contest, and getting elected is more about getting your name out than anything else. It’s about getting the votes needed to make the kind of difference you want to make — whether or not your voters agree with your plans. I have seen candidates go door to door in freshmen dorms asking for votes. It seems unfair to target impressionable first-year students, who may not have full knowledge of the candidates or of the Student Assembly as a whole. This is not the first year I’ve seen that type of campaigning, either.
Candidates receive some votes just by asking for them — not based on their plans or agendas. This is especially troubling because Student Assembly can and does have a significant impact on campus as shown by this year’s $58,000 budget and the fact that they represent the student body. For example, this year, the Assembly has made concentrated efforts on making this campus safer regarding sexual assault. Student Assembly, like it or not, represents the students here on campus, and maybe we should care a little bit more about who holds that office.
To be honest, I knew almost nothing about the other candidates when I voted, and I could not have cared less about finding out anything about them, either. It would have taken too much time and effort that I wasn’t willing to give. Now that the elections have come to a close, I’ve reconsidered the way that I approached them. I keep thinking to myself, “How sad is that?” The fact that many of us, myself obviously included, are too busy and preoccupied to care about learning about the candidates in order to make informed decisions on election day tells you something about how the student body perceives Student Assembly. Further, it tells you something about how students view their obligation to vote and their own role in catalyzing change at the College.
People always say you have a civic duty to vote. I disagree. I think you have a civic duty to vote if you are well-informed and are making a knowledgeable decision for legitimate reasons. Otherwise, maybe you shouldn’t vote. I do not blame the candidates who worked tirelessly throughout election week to get their names out there and have their ideas heard. With their only option being to partake in this popularity contest, who can blame them? Each candidate believed that he or she could positively impact the school and needed to get elected first in order to do that. No, it is on us, the student body, to bring integrity back to the elections process. I know we are all busy, but with all of the debates and campaigning, it is relatively easy to research each candidate.
Next year, I plan on attending the debates and making an informed, conscious decision, and hopefully many more students will do the same. And if you don’t know anything about the candidates and couldn’t care less, that’s fine. Just don’t vote.
