RON campaign divides voters

The Re-Open Nominations (RON) campaign for Students’ Union (SU) President has gathered momentum on campus during this year’s Sabbatical Officer Elections.

Online campaigning and leafleting in campus accommodation are techniques which have both been utilised by the RON campaign.

A Facebook poll conducted by the _Boar_ on the presidential candidates currently shows 71 people intending to vote for RON out of a total of 563 respondents.

Chris Luck, the SU Democracy Officer, said that “If RON wins then we run another by-election for the post which would be likely to take place early in the third term with another nominations period”.

The person behind the “Ron Pres” Facebook campaign describes the campaign as a response to “an urgent democratic problem, whereby voters are asked to choose between just 3 serious presidential candidates this year, compared to 9 last year. “

The motivation behind the campaign is to highlight alternatives to voting for the current candidates. According to “RON Pres”, the campaign aspires to “inform students that if they are not happy with any of the candidates, they still have an option for making their voice heard”. It also aims to get students “engaged with the democratic process” and highlight alternatives to the remaining candidates.

Given reasons for choosing RON over the standing candidates focus on the problem of two “strong presidential candidates” having dropped out in the early stages of the race. The Facebook group states that none of the remaining candidates have demonstrated a “passion for representing students”.

Marijn Nieuwenhuis, who intends to vote for RON, said that his decision was based upon “the issue of representation or the lack thereof”. He also emphasised the lack of choice available to voters, adding “I do not think (or cannot recall) that previous presidential elections have ever witnessed such a low number of candidates.”

Latoya Ferns commented that she intends to vote RON as a way of “addressing the quality of the choice”. She added that “there are more candidates to be had from within our community and indeed… a few who stepped down or were daunted by such a big decision at first will run again”. She also said that “it is possible to question the motives of candidates” who are currently running.

Other students are firmly against voting RON, with second-year Biomedical Sciences student Katy Braddick commenting that “RON will produce candidates who are worse- if people couldn’t be bothered to run in the first place why will they be better than the candidates that could?”

“It effectively amounts to negative campaigning and I can’t help suspecting that will reflect badly on Union democracy if it goes through. It might provoke a flurry of copycat RONs in the future,” commented Andrew Burchell, a second year History and French student.

The RON campaign has been run anonymously. “Ron Pres” commented that “this is a shame
because it prevents us from demonstrating the genuine integrity we all feel towards this cause.”

When asked whether the campaign was directed against joke candidates, the organisers stated
that: “We are absolutely protesting against joke candidates as well as serious candidates.” The campaign does not seek to target any particular candidates, despite misunderstandings from some of the candidates. The RON campaign has stated that it has not received support from current election candidates.

The RON campaign has had little success in recent years, with just 65 students voting RON in 2011, out of a total of 4420 votes. 2009 was RON’s most successful year, with 223 out of 4041 students voting RON. Luck added: “History shows us that RON doesn’t win elections.”