student election...

Student politics bores me. Nothing can be more soul-numbing than a bunch of young people like me whining about the poor food in their colleges or the lack of parking spaces for the cars that daddy bought them.

My interest in student elections is therefore not based on the issues but on the process itself.

In the interest of fairness and justice then, it is important to make sure that things are run in a manner that reflects these two ideals. In this sense, I do not think that the way student elections are conducted on our public university campuses pass muster. Let’s begin by looking at the less contentious points first.

The rules in place with regard to campaigning are really laughable. There are banners and posters put up here and there but they say absolutely nothing except the name of the candidate. There is no mention of their policy grounds and their campaign promises. This is made worse by the fact that the candidates are given about a day to campaign! Add to this the ban on the creation of formal coalitions, and what you get are voters who have little opportunity to know who they are voting for. It makes a mockery of the idea of a true democracy.

Why the crazy rules?

In the light of all this, efforts have been made to make sure that university elections cannot reflect in any way real politics. That is why the system is set up to be so utterly sterile and insipid. As though it is not bad enough that the UUCA prevents students from having any sort of political party allegiances, their campus politics are emasculated to such an extent that it becomes near impossible to reflect any sort of political views.