Starkville’s municipal election season is upon us once again. We, as students and residents of Starkville, have a chance to make quite an impact in the election and the future of this aspiring college town.
After all, most of us live here for at least nine months out of every year. Why shouldn’t we have a voice in the direction of the town and its relationship with the university and its students?
There’s only one problem. In the haste and fervor to run more and more student candidates for Starkville aldermen, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot instead of encouraging future growth.
Four years ago, a student was elected as Ward 4 alderman, and the student body released a collective cheer of exuberance. Finally we would have a voice in city government and someone to guide the town through, as far as the student body was concerned, some much-needed changes.
These changes were the same ones that the students had been lamenting over for years, namely alcohol laws and hours of operation for social establishments.
Of course, the very fact that the locals of Starkville perceived these to be the only issues we students cared about had hindered our crusade many times in the past. But now we had a representative on the most powerful body in local government. The changes have been dramatic over the last four years. We’ve seen events like Bulldog Bash and the Downtown Music Festival continue to grow and lure national acts to this tiny college town.
None of them would have come without cooperation between the university and the local government, and that cooperation would not have been possible without a student voice on the Board of Aldermen. And we’ve added two hours every weekend to restaurants and clubs hours, allowing Starkville to more closely resemble a true college town. Now with the new bypass open and the potential for immense retail and industrial growth, we can all look ahead toward the future of a town that, by all accounts, is about to explode with growth.
One may think that in order for the students and the university to continue to have a hand in the direction of the city, we should run and support more and more student candidates for local government. But there is a problem with this notion. If we continue to run and elect a single new student alderman every four years, unseating the previous occupant, our progress in guiding the town toward its future will be hindered if not completely stifled.
Having a firm student voice on the board will not lend any long-term improvements if that voice comes out of a different mouth every time there is a municipal election. With the ever-changing and fickle nature of student desires and needs, a revolving door of student-elected aldermen will serve only to hold back long-term improvement.
I’m not suggesting that no more students run for alderman. But we want a greater voice in local government, not simply a single new voice every four years. We need to run more students in wards that do not already have a student representative. Continually replacing our single “man on the inside” will serve only to limit our goals and make reaching the ultimate goal of a true college town in Starkville a schizophrenic journey that leads nowhere.
Of course, in the event that an alderman elected as a student ceases to vote with the will of the university student body, he or she will most assuredly face opposition in the next election. But we don’t want to oppose an alderman on the board who continually pushes Starkville toward what it is capable of being. With the new growth allowed by recent infrastructure improvements like the bypass and more jobs, Starkville has the potential to be something it has never been-one of the best college towns in the SEC.
Nick Thompson is a senior communication major. He can be reached at [email protected].