A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Varsity entitled “The dysfunctions of student politics,” in which I called for peace and civility during this election season. After going through my first UTSU election campaign, I can now attest to the fact that I was being naive. Instead of a peaceful campaign based on substance, I was met with a nasty campaign fought over frivolous issues.
Democracy has always been tainted at U of T, with previous elections being marred by allegations of CRO misconduct and CFS interference. That’s why, this year, I was hopeful for an opposition that could take on the CFS status quo, whilst continuing to build on the work of the incumbents and make U of T a better place. I looked for answers on how to build community and spirit, how to boost attendance at our football games, how to ensure that all members of the community are treated with equity and respect, among other things.
Instead, I was greeted with a gimmick: “build the bar.” While it is true that this was not the only thing StudentsFirst campaigned on, it was central to their platform, and totally obscured their other talking points. This, if anything, was a superficial attempt at building community on a campus that boasts more than 30,000 students. StudentsFirst candidates often point to other universities as examples when making their case for the bar. But the problem is that we aren’t like other universities. We’re a commuter school, we’re in downtown Toronto, and we’re surrounded by inexpensive bars on both Bloor and College. We need substantial ideas catering to the needs of the students on our campus.
StudentsFirst also ran a lacklustre campaign. Critics argue that SF cannot be compared to Unity since Unity has the support of the CFS elite. While somewhat true (as far as volunteers are concerned), StudentsFirst’s campaign was slow to get off the ground with a sparse website, a platform that didn’t materialize until days into the campaign period, and posters that didn’t showcase their executive candidates and platform points, but instead had slogans about the campus bar. While many Unity board of directors candidates approached me in the week leading up to voting day, StudentsFirst’s candidates were mostly invisible. It’s hard to believe that they couldn’t have at least found some volunteers to get their message out across campus, like the Change slate did in 2010. There is no excuse for a poorly managed campaign, and students would be right to question whether those running one would be ready to handle the responsibilities of a student union.
In fact, most of the election’s negativity finds its origins in StudentsFirst supporters. Brent Schmidt insisted that Shaun Shepherd issue an apology to his friend who was harassed on Twitter. When it came to taking responsibility for supporters’ erratic behaviour during the debate, however, StudentsFirst was slow to respond and claimed that the campaign had nothing to do with their supporters’ actions. A fair point, but why was Shepherd made to apologize for something he had no control over?
This toxic atmosphere made it into the debate, with signs being held up, students being shouted down, and racial epithets being uttered. Among other occurrences, a candidate for the Unity slate was told she was oppressed and ASSU president Katharine Ball was told to “have a drink” when she brought up equity issues regarding the bar.
One of the reasons for this is that at the outset, a few individuals decided to utilize Republican-style “swift boat” tactics and engage in a smear campaign against Shaun Shepherd, accusing him of dirty tricks and demanding he apologize for tweets he was merely tagged in. Such negative tactics seem not to come out of a genuine desire for positive change but rather an intense dislike for the incumbency.
Finally, the UTSU CRO was also quite disappointing. Demerit points were handed out more liberally to StudentsFirst than to Unity and this makes a farce of our democracy. A CRO should be impartial and respond to complaints based on merit, not on which slate committed the offense.
That being said, I found most of the individuals on the slates to be decent people. It’s just the circumstances surrounding the elections I found to be disheartening. Maybe one day we U of T students will unite and build campus spirit, and perhaps we’ll sing John Lennon songs around a campfire. I’m not holding my breath.
