Roundup Editorial Board
The Pierce College “Town Hall” Meeting With The Candidates last Wednesday was an excellent event, in theory.
What this means is, while the effort to bring in congressional candidates to speak before a student audience was commendable, several failures in execution almost nullified its effectiveness.
After opening with the Pledge of Allegiance and a brief introduction of the nine candidates, most of the event consisted of a “lightning round” that covered what event organizers thought were the key issues.
There were 18 points of discussion in the lightning round, and “government programs” was the closest that any of them came to relevance within a college setting.
With such topics as the mortgage crisis and social security being covered at greater length than any others, it was pretty clear that this event wasn’t really designed with students in mind.
On top of the aforementioned irrelevance, mediator Pam Brown was adamant that the candidates limit themselves to preset responses to each issue.
That’s right; every student needs to know whether each candidate thinks global warming “looks pretty bogus,” and of course nobody’s opinion on SB 1070 extends beyond “love it or hate it.”
Furthermore, it was difficult to figure out which specific candidate was voicing their opinion at any given time because there weren’t even enough chairs on the stage for them, and their name tags were folded pieces of paper that weren’t visible from beyond the fifth row or so.
Eventually even the candidates grew weary of this ineffective format, and were thus almost forced to return to tried-and-true mudslinging tactics.
Turns out that even a mediator gently waving an American flag won’t stop a Republican candidate from expressing his displeasure with the Democratic Party, and vice-versa, of course.
Perhaps the most questionable part of this “Town Hall” meeting, which would imply a great deal of audience participation, is that the lightning round’s coverage of things like the 2nd Amendment left all of five minutes for students to pose questions that actually correspond to us.
In short, the event could have easily taken place somewhere else with a seemingly equivocal outcome.
As critical as we are of the event, the Roundup still looks forward to seeing similar events being held on campus in the future.
It should be noted that it was a commendable effort to get so many candidates together to discuss their platforms with students.
Of course, the major problem was that nobody reminded them they were actually talking to students.
(Eli Peun / Roundup)