Spring Break
ASOSU general elections: to vote or not to vote?
Sanjai Tripathi
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Forum
I've been in college more years than any human should, and I've seen a lot of ASOSU elections come and go.
The common thread is in the candidates' promises. They always give vague pledges to give every student a voice and fight on his or her behalf. They usually back that up with very specific policy proposals for programs involving "diversity" or being more "green," which are invariably politically correct but almost always inconsequential to the lives of most students.
For sure, some of the programs coming out of ASOSU provide some value, and ASOSU executives do have a role in overseeing those programs, I presume. So in some small way, your vote in ASOSU elections does have an effect.
So by all means, if you are concerned about which flowers and balloons we will have at the prom or some random student involvement activity, vote for the team you think will arrange those well.
If you are like me though, you will withhold your vote, out of protest for the general ineffectiveness of the whole endeavor.
Because besides general housekeeping around campus, ASOSU executives have a more important job: to lobby state government on our behalf. In that job, they haven't succeeded.
Sure, they go out there and perform an activity that they call lobbying.
But as John Wooden said: "never confuse activity with accomplishment."
Our elected "leaders," as they like to be called, are very good at holding meetings with members of state government, which is effective networking for them to advance their careers later in life.
On the matter of affecting change for students however, they fail.
Over those many years of college, I've seen the state steadily cut support for universities. Nearly every year, tuition goes up faster than inflation and the proportion of in-state tuition actually paid for by the state declines.
Higher education is perhaps the government program most directly tied to creating jobs and lifting wages, which every politician loves. One would think that it would be easy to sell them on the idea of supporting it, but somehow our student leaders have managed to not accomplish that.
The common thread is in the candidates' promises. They always give vague pledges to give every student a voice and fight on his or her behalf. They usually back that up with very specific policy proposals for programs involving "diversity" or being more "green," which are invariably politically correct but almost always inconsequential to the lives of most students.
For sure, some of the programs coming out of ASOSU provide some value, and ASOSU executives do have a role in overseeing those programs, I presume. So in some small way, your vote in ASOSU elections does have an effect.
So by all means, if you are concerned about which flowers and balloons we will have at the prom or some random student involvement activity, vote for the team you think will arrange those well.
If you are like me though, you will withhold your vote, out of protest for the general ineffectiveness of the whole endeavor.
Because besides general housekeeping around campus, ASOSU executives have a more important job: to lobby state government on our behalf. In that job, they haven't succeeded.
Sure, they go out there and perform an activity that they call lobbying.
But as John Wooden said: "never confuse activity with accomplishment."
Our elected "leaders," as they like to be called, are very good at holding meetings with members of state government, which is effective networking for them to advance their careers later in life.
On the matter of affecting change for students however, they fail.
Over those many years of college, I've seen the state steadily cut support for universities. Nearly every year, tuition goes up faster than inflation and the proportion of in-state tuition actually paid for by the state declines.
Higher education is perhaps the government program most directly tied to creating jobs and lifting wages, which every politician loves. One would think that it would be easy to sell them on the idea of supporting it, but somehow our student leaders have managed to not accomplish that.
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Anonymous
posted 4/22/09 @ 11:29 PM PST
Are you kidding!?!?!
Was it just me, or did anyone else notice the flood of ASOSU folks in every classroom and in every corner of the MU Quad back in the Fall? I am pretty sure they were trying to "mobilize a powerful voting interest group". (Continued…)
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