I'm sure that I wasn't the only one who smelled the desperation in the air last week when an avalanche of Student Assembly blitzes filled my in-box pleading with me to vote. Outgoing Student Assembly President Josh Green implored us to raise our collective voice with talk of the need for a high voter turnout in order to validate both student opinion and the position of whomever we would place on the Steering Committee. But voter turnout, as I was notified by yet-another SA blitz, was low. A surprise? No.
Voter turnout was low because the election was poorly conceived, poorly organized and poorly realized. Admittedly, much blame should fall on the Trustees for failing to notify the Assembly that they would be permitted to choose two of the Steering Committee members a mere two weeks before the names of these members would be required to be announced. However, even given the limited time frame the SA had to work with, it still did the Dartmouth student body a disservice.
First, the nomination process for the initial election was ludicrous. Candidates did not even need to meet the nomination standards of an ordinary SA office, which is by no means a sure way of selecting a candidate pool, but at least the requirement to obtain 50 signatures eliminates candidates who are not really serious, as no doubt some of the umpteen odd candidates in this election were not. Yet even though the initial election for the Steering Committee suffered from an overabundance of candidates, at least it served as a small demonstration that the student body at large is by no means apathetic towards this issue of student life. Rather, the damage done by this large candidate pool fell upon the Assembly when the second and final stage of the election rolled around. That is, when the veil of confusion brought about by twenty-some candidates had been lifted, we found that we were left with four candidates that almost no one had voted for, and whom many of us knew nothing about.
Now, of course, it is easy and wrong to criticize our elected representatives when we as a student body only show interest in a cause after they have failed at it. But the cause of fighting for the rights of students to control their own social lives has been both proactive and unified since the Trustees launched their Five Principles last term, and there is no reason to think that this election, with what it portends for the fate of this issue, would be otherwise. The interest of the students was there. The Assembly failed to organize and channel that interest into electing a representative who would truly represent us.
I won't play the game of hindsight as to what could have been done better to organize the election. It isn't productive and it isn't the job I was elected to do. I voted for several people for several positions a few weeks ago with the idea that this time, when it really counted, they might not be full of hot air, and that maybe, if they knew that we the students were behind them, they might take this opportunity to lead us, and put all of the community dinners with free Subway on hold for a while. Once again, though, I was disappointed. If ever there was an opportunity for the Assembly to demonstrate that it has the ability to really champion the cause of students, this was it. It is now more apparent than ever that not only does the SA have no discernible authority within this community, it also wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do with it if it did.
