To the Editor:
In light of the campaign "scandals" of the last week I am left wondering why politics at Dartmouth College are so political.I don't understand why it is necessary to petition campus organizations for their support, in hopes that the groups' members will blindly vote for the assigned candidate. In an atmosphere where candidates for every office are professing their skill at "ending infighting in the Student Assembly," which in practice has come to be defined as partisanship and underhandedness, these presidential candidates, who should be leading this attempt at reformation, cannot even run their own candidacies without resorting to the same tactics.
The candidates have all admitted their premature attempts to garner votes, but provide various rationalizations for their actions, claiming that they were merely "planning" or "speaking" because they were invited.Therefore, the sole purpose of an investigation into these candidates' transgressions would only be to establish if their admitted actions could be considered "illegal" not if they actually did them.In other words, they said they did it, but think it was okay.
It seems strange that the whole purpose of an inquiry would only be to dole out punishment and not to prove guilt.Regardless of the outcome of such an investigation, and regardless of the fact that they may have been "jumping the gun" in their campaigns, they were still fighting to guarantee themselves their little share of the electorate.
While it is an idealistic dream to have elections without this type of bartering for voter support, in a community such as this, with only a few thousand voters,this dream is not so unrealistic.By campaigning for group support and not individual votes, the candidates are insulting the intelligence of every student of Dartmouth College.It doesn't matter if they were only doing what their predecessors did or what they had to do to try and "win," an election is not worth disregarding morality.Each student can make up their own mind about this election.
Even if people don't know the candidates, the whole purpose of campaigns, speaking arrangements and election statements should be to show the constituency why they would be a better candidate and not to convince an aristocracy of student leaders to support them.Similarly, by conforming to organization-imposed decisions in such matters, students are insulting and wasting their own intelligence.
