Questing for Atlantis

Real election season is upon us. No, I am not speaking of these last, deciding days of the presidential primaries. What I’m talking about is the election that really matters, the one that will make a true lasting impact on the rest of our lives – SGA ELECTIONS!!!

All kidding aside though, this election does actually matter, for several reasons. To begin with, it is representative of a lot of what is wrong with our current national political environment. In the run-up to the election we saw an attempt to pass campaign finance reform, reform that attempted to restrict political speech, was completely unenforceable, and would have led to serious negative changes in how campaigns are run. And that bill only just barely was defeated, 12-10. Two votes, that was how close we were to an egregious curtailing of what should be a given. If this is how the leaders of the youth think today, what are we looking at 20 years from now when they have become the leaders of the world?

And then there’s the issue of the make-up of this election. There is only one contested race in the entire election – the presidency – and even worse than that, there are a number of seats sitting empty, without a single candidate running to represent multiple constituencies. It’s bad enough that numerous individuals, myself included will be awarded seats without having had to do any more work than attend a meeting and get some signatures, but it’s even worse that a sizeable chunk of the next student body will not have even gone through this sham of an electoral process.

All of this brings us to the important issue in this election. As noted, there is only one contested election, that of the presidency. While both the candidates are good people with some excellent ideas, in the end they’re both more of the same, platforms not rooted in ideas or philosophy, but in a checklist of things they’d like to be accomplished. That’s fine for a student government, they never have much power, but why should we settle when we can strive for so much more? That is why I created a party for the election, Common Sense, and much more importantly, the Student Funds Protection Pledge.

Both the party and the Pledge are devoted to an issue that is simple but with the potential to be of massive impact. In short, they are both attempts to radically change the spending mindset of the SGA. I have been a senator for the past year, and I have personally seen that many in the SGA seem to think that the money used by SGA belongs to the SGA, an assumption I find most offensive. The money belongs to the students and is only held in trust by the SGA. That trust carries with it responsibilities, responsibilities that have been frequently ignored.

The Pledge can potentially change that. By signing it a candidate makes a written promise that he or she recognizes SGA money really belongs to the students and because of that he or she will oppose all spending not benefiting a reasonably large portion of the student body and will oppose any and all spending that only benefits members of the Student Government. Several candidates have told me that while they believe in the Pledge, they will not sign it for one reason or another. Personally, I find this baffling. If a person believes in something, why then would they refuse to put it in writing unless they think they’ll break the promise?

By the time you read this, odds are the election will be over already, so I won’t make any endorsements, except of the Pledge. What I am doing is calling on everyone to make sure they hold the SGA accountable. Demand that your representatives acknowledge that it’s your money, not theirs, and that they need to spend it accordingly.