A dangerous misconception has been floating around campus for months, and this week the student body felt the sting of it.
The misconception is that the student body suffers from the kind of impassioned campaigning that students running for SA executive office took part in about this time last year. The result of the misconception, and the result of ensuing campaign reforms, is the kind of lackluster SA executive elections we saw this week.
Voter turnout fell by more than half from the year before. It’s safe to assume that at least part of the blame for the drop in student interest can be pinned on the lack of campaigning by candidates for executive offices.
It seems like no candidate this year mounted the kind of pervasive campaign that several candidates last year succeeded in mounting. T.J. Harvey’s campaign was the most visible, but it was nothing compared to some of his predecessors’ campaigns.
At election time last year, the drill field was alive with campaigners. Adam Telle loyalists paraded around the Drill Field in lime green T-shirts with gargantuan bed sheet campaign banners. Juan McCullum had a small army of people handing out red and blue Musgrove-esque campaign stickers.
The SA passed legislation last semester limiting the time candidates running for SA executive offices could campaign for office to 30 days prior to an election. The idea behind the legislation was to limit harassment of students in such campaign-heavy areas as the Drill Field.
The problem is, campaigning, especially the kind of fervent campaigning the student body saw last year, is vital to the election process. It informs and gets people invested in the elections.
The words “harassment” and “campaigning” shouldn’t be associated when discussing Student Association elections. It’s detrimental to the democratic process.
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.