TOPIC | Student elections
OUR VIEW | Provide students with ASO candidate information earlier.
Instructors and students alike agree the Associated Students Organization’s election effort was impressive this year, if not the best the school has done in recent memory.
Just short of record breaking, more than 1,100 students cast their votes this year – more than any other campus.
Still, unless more effort is seen from individual candidates, the process will remain far from professional, making it difficult to remain confident students are voting based on information and character, rather than who passed out the best snacks.
The school was plastered with signs, banners and posters for everyone running, yet few students actually had any idea what issues the candidates supported.
Many students had to base their vote on cute quotes and catchphrases, since the only relevant information on the signs was the outline of duties for each position.
There was also a lack of advertising for the election forum, the only event in which students could learn about the candidates. Students needed to know the date weeks in advance if they were to make time to attend.
The election forum was definitely a step in the right direction, but there must be some supplementary material for the students unable to attend such an event, such as rethinking the content of the signs made by individual candidates.
Many students saw a flood of orange thunderbolts, but it wasn’t the Bookstore selling Gatorade. It was a candidate selling his image.
Instead of meaningless fluff, candidates should have posted their ideas and concerns.
A remedy for many of these problems would be to utilize the overlooked ASO Web page, which hasn’t been updated since the end of the fall semester.
A short outline of the candidates’ platforms would have been sufficient, with a few posters leading voters to the Web site. It would be useless if no one knew anyone was posting.
The next forum should be staged out in the open to give passing students a chance to crowd around and find out what is going on. The Student Community Center is wonderful, but letting ASO hopefuls’ voices carry through the mall would have been a better idea than showing off the shiny new building.