By Dick Snyder
It’s time the Election Procedures Committee got with the times. Every year, students and candidates and even EPC members complain that the rules governing campaigning are out to lunch, And yet, every year, no serious efforts are made to fix them.
This year’s voter turn out was about 10 per cent; about 1,200 students. Depending on who you talk to (either student political hacks or actual students), this is good, bad or average. Well, average isn’t good enough and it can be improved.
The current campaign methods don’t work. I’ve talked to people who, after walking down Jorgenson Hall, past walls covered in posters and election announcements, come into my office and ask, “So, when is the election, anyway?”
There are solutions. We need a longer campaign period, for one. A week and a half is not enough time. This turns the campaign into nothing more than a race to poster the entire campus. Issues? Who’s got time to talk about the issues when the real task is to come up with the best poster and stick it in as many places as possible? A longer campaign would also give the campus media more time to cover the candidates and do a better job of examining their platforms.
Some of the initiative has to be shouldered by the candidates themselves. They need to do more one-on-one canvassing with students, or even go door-to-door in the residences. They should organize and publicize their own speeches and make classroom presentations. They should make better use of campus media by bringing statements and platforms to the press.
Unfortunately, a great opportunity was lost this year when the Internet was overlooked as an effective tool for both campaign rhetoric and genuine dissemination of information on how the election functions. The Students of Change, techno geeks to the very core, planned on using the Internet to spread their word. They say they were told by the EPC that net campaigning was not allowed. Chief Returning Officer Andrea Webb says she made no such statement and admitted she had no way of controlling what the candidates did on the Internet.
But at the pre-campaign meeting between candidates, the EPC and the press on Jan. 20, Webb and advisor Paul Felstein were less than clear on this. Candidates were left with the impression that they had best avoid the net, lest they be disqualified. The SOC is understandably bitter. Students who cruise Ryerson’s newsgroup have said they would like to see campaign material posted. Fears by the EPC that the net is not equitable—that not all students and candidates have access—are unfounded. Even the federal government and the terminally regressive Reform party have recognized the benefits of net campaigning.
And the best thing about the net is that it is self-regulating. Netters have notoriously low tolerance of postings which they see as self-indulgent or superfluous. Candidates would be ill-advised to blanket the net with campaign material, because they would piss off more people than they would convert.
This isn’t rocket science; this is applied technology. And it’s available to everyone. Let’s hope that next year, the EPC—and the candidates—take a serious look at bringing campus elections into the 20th century.
Leave a Reply