Leadership absent from this year’s student government candidates
COMMENTARY
Brandon Ortiz

Last week’s state and federal elections were criticized as substanceless, mudslinging affairs which, consequently, kept about 60 percent of the electorate home.

Not all too different from today’s Student Government Association officer elections, where a 40 percent turnout would be considered very good.

This year’s slate of candidates is above name-calling, robbing the election any chance of being remotely interesting. Instead, all 10 candidates have nearly identical superficial platforms of more communication and better representation.

Yawn.

The few proposals some candidates have made are vague. For example, Brad Thompson, the lone candidate for president, wants to renovate the Student Center so it can be a place to hang out. He wants to clear the basement so it can be a place for student organizations to meet, but offers few details on what else he would like to do. A renovated Student Center might have some pool or foosball tables, he said during a Skiff editorial board interview, but it is unclear where they will go.

He did say he would support committing $10,000 of SGA funds to the endeavor, but that was only after being pressed. The rest of the money would have to come from the administration. Whether he can convince the higher-ups to support him in a bad budget year is another question.

I don’t mean to pick on Brad — he is actually the best candidate in any race. But his Student Center proposal is one of the most substantive proposals in this year’s election, which is disappointing.

In a republican government, candidates theoretically run on a definitive platform, allowing voters to endorse the best set of proposals through their vote. A politician’s campaign then centers on convincing voters that his or her platform is the best.

What we get are 10 people campaigning on a platform of communication: I want to find out what you want, then do it.

Isn’t this a little backward?

Katie Gordon, who is running for vice president of the House of Student Representatives, put it best during an interview with the Skiff editorial board: “We knew what they wanted last semester, they probably want the same thing this semester.”

Leadership is rallying your constituents around an idea, not rallying yourself around your constituent’s idea.

That’s followship.

This is not to say representatives should ignore their constituents. They shouldn’t. But seeking student input should not be the central theme of a candidate’s campaign.

Virtually all of the candidates want to restructure the House of Student Representatives to include representation by each academic college. It is an effort to improve the representation of upper upperclassmen, who rarely participate in SGA.

Nobody will commit to abandoning the current system of representation by where you live, but nobody has said exactly how they would incorporate academic representation. A debate, consequently, is meaningless: You can’t debate a proposal that doesn’t exist.
Even the idea in itself is problematic.

• There is no reason to think it will encourage upperclassmen to run for SGA. If anything, the same freshmen who run for their residential hall will probably run for their college.

• Representation by college, gasp, will actually decrease communication between representatives and constituents. It is easy to talk to your constituents when they live next door to you. It is harder to do it during class.

• What next? So the student body will be better represented. What does SGA want to do next other than ask constituents what they want?

Last year, only 1,758 student voted, which was actually a 400-vote increase from the year before. I doubt that total will increase substantially; this year’s candidates have not offered any exciting ideas to compel the student body to vote. Instead, they have offered us the same old politically-correct garbage.

I guess we can’t expect much more. After all, they are politicians.

Editor in chief Brandon Ortiz is a junior news-editorial journalism major from Fort Worth.