It has reached that time of year again. The walls are draped in posters; the puns are out in force. The leadership race has begun. It’s all very exciting. The first time you see it, there’s that inescapable feeling that something big is happening. Then suddenly, a puzzling question appears- who even are these people?
For all of the visual impact of the race, the student body remains relatively apathetic to the most important element, namely the voting. Every year it has the air of a grand popularity competition, in which having never heard of the majority of candidates, that mate from your course who once bought you a pint-so-is-probably-nice-maybe gets one more vote.
If you don’t know anybody, you can at least vote for the most finely formed campaign pun; a sentence so subtle as to vex you into a vote. I’m not one to denounce the mighty pun – it gave us Monty Python and endless possibilities to make friends want to hit us in frustration – but frankly I wouldn’t have voted for Brexit even if the campaign had a glorious enough pun to break the benevolence of God. It’s not a great idea to vote on a pun in the leadership race either.
Popularity contests meanwhile are crap in all forms – no need for the slightest discussion here.
Just like national politics, we really should pay attention to the policies, not the personalities, but it’s not long before the next brick wall rises. The candidates of some positions (not all) are campaigning for very similar goals. They all offer fantastic and thoroughly important developments, but it’s a little tricky choosing between near carbon-copies. Maybe there’s a good message there: Maybe there is actual cohesion on campus of what needs improving, but that doesn’t help choosing someone.
It might then come as a surprise that I think this pun-ilicous personality race of identical ideas is absolutely fantastic. The process, though full of flaws is an exercise in values and eventually leads to one of our university’s great assets: a fabulously effective student exec which is a powerful driving force in university affairs. I like to think of myself as pragmatic, and if a broken system that not enough people care about somehow keeps producing great results, then that works for me just fine. After all, as I’m sure you’ll all find out as you flick through the manifestos of this year’s candidates -because you are definitely not going to be apathetic this year and contribute to nullifying the system – you will no doubt notice something as puzzling as the fact you’ve never heard of any of them; they’re all pretty good.
The fact is this. We need our student exec and they won’t exist without the leadership race. There’s luckily a nice sneaky trick for when something needs to stay but the process to get there is awful. Fix the problem and keep the good bit. I think the candidates are keepers. Go read their manifestos and be chuffed that there are at least 32 of the university’s 32’000 students that are not apathetic and actually care a little bit about exam feedback and the cost of drinks at fruity.
That word ‘apathy’ keeps coming up with unfortunately good reason. The exec race is flawed not because of mean, exploitative prospective politicians using this election as an ego-drive. I don’t believe the candidates are running for that reason at all. It is flawed because the student population is apathetic. Why the onslaught of puns and meme-encouraged campaigning? They’re the only language we seem to understand right now. The student exec is something truly special. Let’s swap the apathy for active engagement and help the exec reach new heights.
Tim van Gardingen
(Image courtesy of LUU)