Dear Frustrated Student:
It’s that time of year again! Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve already been bombarded with heaps of black-and green-shirted candidates promulgating political rhetoric and propagandizing promises at the library, business loop, Presidents’ Circle and the University Bookstore.
Welcome to the Eighth Circle of Hell. Pick up a flier on your way in!
For the next two weeks, you will be the most wanted person on campus, capable of single-handedly changing a few lives in fairly drastic ways. You may receive more phone calls than you ever have, from acquaintances you didn’t even know you had, pleading for you to vote for so-and-so from the blankity-blank party-because it’s your student duty, and they’re the best.
You may be asked to eat some stale bagels washed down with cool, refreshingly watered-down Tang, with the expectation to vote for them because of this pecuniary culinary offering. They may even invite you to adopt their color scheme and wear a T-shirt in support of them, a shirt they will expect you to wear every day, rain or snow, until Spring Break.
By the end of all this, you may find yourself tempted to ignore these black and green students at all costs, preferring alleyways, strips of lawn, tree branches and rooftops to the politically trafficked sidewalks on campus.
But before you take these evasive maneuvers, stop and listen to a candidate, at least once.
Keep in mind that ASUU annually controls anywhere from $600 to $800 of your money in the form of student fees.
Listen to them, and they may educate or entertain you, depending on their platform or personalities.
But more importantly than all that, this is your chance to strike back at the beast.
For example, every year, parties and candidates make promises they can’t fulfill-kind of like the “Root Beer in Drinking Fountains” campaign so stereotyped by every TV high school drama ever produced. This year is no different.
The BLOC Party’s Web site promises “Lowered Tuition” and “Cutbacks in Government Spending”-which sound nice, but are in no way realistic for ASUU to achieve. They also promise to hold “Town Hall Meetings” and “A State of ASUU Address”-two events which already exist. These promises, empty or not, will be thrown at you like rice at a wedding.
Fret not, fellow student! You can effectively throw your own rice in return!
If a candidate promises something specific, like the creation of a “Scholarship Board” dedicated to getting you, the typical starving student, a scholarship, cut to the core and ask them how exactly they’re going to get more money from private donors than the university already does, or what they’ll do differently than the current administration.
The Big Idea Party’s Shahene Pezeshki wants to spend next year “delivering opportunities on campus.” Once again, a very nice thing to say but not specific in the least. You need to ask the person how his or her party intends to realistically accomplish this. Who knows? He or she might come up with a good answer.
These people are embarking on something that will directly affect you, whether you like it or not, for the next academic year.
Give them your ear, if you can spare it, and you won’t be disappointed. At the cost of a few moments of your time, you can educate and entertain yourself, without causing undue stress or anxiety.