Campaigning for Student Association elections began last Monday to a rousing round of… apathy.
Why, when SA elections were so hotly contested last year, is there so much disinterest this year? The candidate turnout is low, and not many people seem to care about the upcoming elections.
Perhaps it’s because the view of the SA has changed over the past year.
While the SA of this year has certainly done plenty of work on campus and for city politics, including reinstating the Night Route and conducting the petition and voter drives of last semester, the SA just hasn’t presented itself as well.
No one realizes the SA is actually doing something because the SA hasn’t done a good job getting people excited about it.
It’s funny that so many people complain about the Greeks controlling the campus, but then no one tries to run and contest Greeks getting SA positions.
It is amazing that people are so apathetic about choosing the next officers of the most influential group on campus. Last year about this time, all people talked about were the SA elections.
Last year 17 candidates ran for office, with only the office of the treasurer going uncontested. Many other offices had three to four people running, making for a closely contested and exciting race.
Runoffs had to be held for the offices of president, attorney general, secretary and senior class president.
Along with the controversy over the presidential race and extensive Reflector coverage, the sheer excitement of the election caused a record voter turnout in the general election of 3,142 votes and an even higher turnout in the runoffs.
This year 12 candidates are campaigning for SA elections. The offices of vice president and secretary are uncontested. Two people each are running for president and treasurer, and three people each are running for attorney general and senior class president.
Needless to say, this election does not seem that exciting, and will not get the record voter turnout of last year.
The Reflector editorial board is made up of opinion editor Angela Adair, news editor Elizabeth Crisp, assistant news editor Jed Pressgrove, sports editor Jeff Edwards, entertainment editor Dustin Barnes, managing editor Pam McTeer and editor in chief Josh Foreman.