There is a very important vote on campus today:Coke or Pepsi. Oh wait, there's another vote that will decide the future of social life at the College, but no one knows what's going on with that because the electoral process for it is a disaster.
Few people besides the candidates themselves know who is running for the position of Trustee Steering Committee representative, and even those who have seen the names likely don't know the candidates or for what they stand.
There was a single, sparsely-attended, hour-long information session held last night, and there were no statements or platforms publicized to the student body until last night when the campus was blitzed a 15-page Word document they were expected to download and read to find out about the candidates. How many students could they possibly have expected to read through that?
When this election was announced, it was clear it would take a lot of rushed effort and publicity to make it work.
The tight time frame made this critically important. Unfortunately, little has been done besides mass blitzes from Student Assembly, as usual meeting more than one open-apple-D as they arrived. The result of all this is an ill-informed electorate making a very important decision.
One of the goals of the Assembly in setting up this election was to establish a good rapport with the student body, at the outset of the new officers' tenure. It was, to some degree, a public relations move. Though this may have been a good idea politically, it was taking the easy way out at the College's expense.
The Assembly was given the task of selecting two students. It decided to shift half of that burden onto the student body. This could have resulted in a good student representative - if the Assembly took care to ensure that students were well informed about the candidates. But that was not done.
Hopefully today's election will result in the best candidate for the job, but it certainly will not be because of the Student Assembly's efforts, because it fell short of what was needed for this election to be successful.