Posters are creating an eyesore, but there are precious few other ways to get students to remember a name
By Emily Bowers
It happens like clockwork, as regular as the RyeSAC executive elections themselves. Fluorescent campaign posters crop up seemingly overnight to wallpaper the hallways of the Ryerson campus. They’re an eyesore for students, but necessary to get messages out, say campaigners.
Darren Cooney, a RyeSAC presidential candidate, says there are limited ways of getting a face and a message known around a campus with a mostly commuter population.
“[Students ask] oh, there’s Darren again, but you remember my name,” he says. “You’ve got to do something to get your name out there.”
Candidates for RyeSAC’s presidency are given a $300 budget from RyeSAC. Cooney estimates that he spent a majority of that on posters.
Alex Lisman, who’s also running for president, says almost all of his budget goes toward posters and pamphlets. But he says he is looking at other ways to communicate to Ryerson students.
“The best (way to connect) is one-to-one outreach,” Lisman says, adding that candidates should have more debates and more discussion forums before the election race starts.
First-year chemical engineering student Layla Dabier says the candidates need to do more to meet students face-to-face.
“[There should be] more personal interaction,” she says. “I don’t know any of these people.”
The hundreds of posters may be a necessary part of a RyeSAC campaign, but on Friday afternoon, election regulations dictate that the posters must be removed from the walls. There are no specific provisions in the elections rule book however, that say how those posters should be removed.
Cooney says that efforts are made to recycle the posters when all the candidates sweep the school together and take them down, but there’s no rule saying they must recycle.
“It’s on the honour system,” Cooney says.
Lisman says that during last year’s election, all the posters were tossed in garbage bags and sorted out later in the RyeSAC office, though he wasn’t positive they were recycled.
“I think we can make some serious changes to that kind of policy,” Lisman says.
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