By Mohamed Omar
Editor-In-Chief
What do the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) elections and The Big Bang Theory have in common? They’re both shit-shows that treat the audience like thumbsucking dolts.
The TV show believes its audience will always laugh at awkward words muttered by a character that looks like the lovechild of Bono and Eugene Levy. The RSU elections assume students don’t care about how disgustingly awful our annual dance with democracy is carried out.
In late January, the RSU election season started off as professionally as a drunk gorilla in a boardroom. From the beginning, there were discrepancies in information given to candidates and to the student body. Bylaws weren’t followed. Websites were bought and changed. Posters were torn down, racist comments appeared on others.
But the way that the election is generally carried out – especially the hiring of its officials – is what’s truly a punch to the student body’s genitalia.
The person officiating the election, supposedly a neutral thirdparty, was hired by a full-time RSU employee – which is fine save for the fact that they both worked together at York in 2006.
An election debate – which wasn’t an actual debate but rather a chance for each slate to see who has louder friends – was held on Feb. 2. Within hours it won the World’s Dumbest Debate award, handed out by the Mohamed Omar Association. The debate had a limit of three questions for each position, resulting in friends of candidates rushing to the microphone to ask what were mostly shitty, pre-agreed upon questions.
A full opposition slate, like this year’s Transform Ryerson, is a rarity in this campus’ student politics. Their platform isn’t revolutionary by any means, but then again the incumbent slate, Unite Ryerson, is offering a nice, fat dose of status quo.
The rarity doesn’t imply ability, of course. They could end up being even worse than the status quo.
But then again, almost anything is better than The Big Bang Theory.
Leave a Reply