Election season is upon us once again! Oh yes, it is time to cast your vote and show the world once and for all that university students are not to be trifled with. First the election and then the world! We know what we want and we're going to use our power at the polls to get it. In fact, we—
Oh, wait. It's the ASM elections. It's alright, you can now return to your previously scheduled Sudoku.
ASM stands for Associated Students of Madison, but it's hard to say the organization actually has much to do with the majority of the student population. It's true that their decisions have some effect on student interests in areas such as segregated fees, but I'm willing to wager that for most UW-Madison students, the extent of involvement with ASM is some half-hearted grumbling over the bill at the start of each semester.
Even when people do get interested enough to vote on something, such as the controversial Union renovation referendum sponsored by the Wisconsin Union Directorate, it doesn't appear to have an effect. WUD's message to students in that instance seemed to be ""sure, you can vote it down three times, but we'll keep bringing it up and nullifying election results until the outcome is what we want anyway.""
When a man is given the U.S. presidency in spite of losing the popular vote, it can't be that much of a stretch to declare victory in an election round where less than 7 percent of students ended up voting.
But let's look at the candidates for this election. Surely there will be some concrete stances and identifiable goals that discerning students can rally behind here. If they're going to be deciding what gets funded with segregated fees, it will be helpful to check the ""Know Your Candidates"" brochure provided by the ever-helpful ASM website.
Or ... not. Clearly, this spring's candidate roster was given a crash course in contemporary politicking: Be as vague as possible. A catchy slogan is much better than a substantive one. Give no specifics on any plan you may propose; if you don't give any information on how you're going to realize it, it's much harder to criticize.
This is how in national politics we get cloudy campaign promises of everything from universal health care (that may or may not be universal) to troop withdrawal (or maybe redeployment) to the repeal of the Roe v. Wade decision (or possibly its protection), depending on the candidate, with no practical information by which to judge any of the proposals.
The resounding retort to the question, ""Can I just get a straight answer?"" Inconceivable! A truly informed populace tends to be a restive one and nobody wants that.
So here we have our aspiring student representatives, whose promises range from providing ""fresh ideas"" (but not what they are), ""innovative solutions to complex problems"" (with no indication of which), and helping students succeed ""in college and in life"" (but not how that's going to happen).
It would seem that candidates are limited to one sentence sound bytes, a restriction I find difficult to fathom when there's so much talk about getting students involved and interested.
Still, there's a lot that could be said with one sentence, and nobody is saying any of it. For example, I don't want you to tell me that you're ""dedicated and hard-working."" I want to hear ""I'm dedicated to bus passes, University Health Services and Sex Out Loud."" Not: ""I'm dedicated to multicultural and religious affairs"" but ""I'll put your money here, here and here.""
As it is, it's like being told to pick a card from a deck you can't see. One card will get you free beer, one will make your head explode, and the rest won't really do anything at all. And they complain that no one is interested.
