The SAC elections take place this week, and we have some important political decisions to make. Unfortunately, electing a student government is no easy task. Our criteria for selecting one candidate over another seem insufficient: every poster is as unconvincing as the rest, and in-class solicitations and university-hosted websites do little to sway the ambivalent. But is this pessimism misguided?
From year to year, most of us rarely see any tangible change in university life, save a consistent increase in tuition and class size. Occasionally, we see minor changes in our health plans. Sometimes we get novel developments, like the discounted student Metropass or free ISIC cards. But for the most part, these changes are far from mandated.
SAC is the vehicle for these changes. In principle, they are the mediating body between the students and university administration, striving to best represent our interests to the ivory tower. But in practice, these results are rarely achieved. In fact, it can seem that SAC is an organizational nightmare haunted by inefficacy, plagued with a grim history of irresponsibly managed finance and unfulfilled promises.
It is no surprise that political cynicism permeates through the student body. Despite the convenience of online voting, voter turnout has been embarrassingly low. It is so bad, in fact, that we risk another year of ill-chosen and ill-prepared candidates if voter apathy does not decrease. So what are we to do? How can we dispel this cynicism and collectively choose the most appropriate presidential candidate?
In federal elections, we have a number of reasonable ways to select a candidate. Most saliently, we have party affiliation. Particular candidates commit themselves to particular sets of values-usually exemplified by a party platform-which we can either identify with or disparage. Voting in federal elections, then, can simply be a matter of matching up your values with those of the political party to which the candidate is aligned. Authoritative figures and other convincing orators also shape our political decisions. Another method for selection is historical. Political parties have track records, and so do the individual candidates that comprise them.
To be sure, these criteria are problematic and open to numerous objections. But this much is true: they help us make the most informed decisions we can.
In student elections, these decisional shortcuts are unavailable. Candidates are not members of lasting political parties with any sort of long-term, coherent agenda. And no party distinguishes itself from any other in any convincing sense. Even the environmentally oriented party barely stands out by virtue of promising parking discounts for environmentally friendly cars. It is not heretical to say that these political parties are, in most senses, wholly arbitrary and historically insignificant.
So, while the candidates themselves usually have experience in student politics, we really have no real criterion for determining whether they are any good. Student politics are scarcely documented in campus media. But, this is not their fault. The poor coverage can be primarily attributed to a lack of significant work being done by these political groups. In other words, there is nothing to report.
Without lasting campus political groups, informative media coverage or any adequate way to assess the past work of the candidates, we face an impasse. Either we can keep up our political cynicism or we can try choosing the best possible candidate.
But given the aforementioned barriers, how can we stop this cynicism from precluding the election of a good government?
I suggest that we abandon the attempt to determine the best candidate through reading the articles and collecting mob data. Nor can we look to the past for insight, for it is poorly documented and has no consistent lineage of political parties or individual achievement. Finally, no authoritative voice can guide us.
In light of these barriers, we still have a way to choose the best candidate: the practical plausibility of candidate platforms as exemplified by their posters. We ought to pick the candidate whose promises are consistent and clearly defined, and that satisfy our intuitive sense of what can be feasibly accomplished in a year or two.
This criterion must exclude any candidate who promises to contribute to the “campus community.” The reason: the phrase has no well-defined referent. It also excludes candidates wishing to make the campus “more green.” The reason: these things do not happen in a year, or even if they could, it would be a formidable project that would divert attention from more pressing concerns in our academic world.
Sure, these are speculative claims. But then so is any other basis for selecting the right candidate. Admittedly, the compromise solution proposed requires a leap of faith, but it is all we have. Really.
