Tête à Tête: Do the SU elections actually matter for your University experience?

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YES – Gabi Hayhurst

Every year campus’ familiar faces recruit their most loyal henchmen to battle for the approval of the student body.

Many view this as a pointless week of the year; a hollow popularity contest full of empty manifesto promises and encounters with sycophants applying for positions which give the illusion that students have control over their university experience.

I disagree. I think Elections week is full of empty promises and a popularity contest, but I do not think it is pointless. It matters because election week exemplifies adult life in an increasingly superficial society.

Though perhaps this view takes the week too seriously. Elections week is also important because it is fun and makes campus buzz with activity. It also stimulates debate.

Many people like nothing more than complaining and there is so much to complain about – the decorative litter, SU policy and the constant barrage of pointless facebook notifications.
This week is also important because it can save us money as candidates often give away free food and drink as bribery.

Although many students don’t seem to utilise their elected representatives, election week does familiarise us with these personalities so if we ever do decide to call on them, at least we have had the chance to get to know each candidate and what they’re all about.

Kudos to the candidates, it is not their fault the system is viewed as hollow and they do seem to genuinely care and work hard – even if it is sometimes entirely for comedic effect.[/one_third]

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NO – Chris Sharpe

Helpfully, SU Elections week, particularly in the context of the year at large, is a perfect microcosm of the impact student democracy will have upon your average daily life at Uni.

In one corner: a very small yet despotically vocal minority, the victims-cum-originators of a bizarre but fortunately temporary epidemic, symptoms of which include cardboard taking on the properties of Kubrick’s monolith, and extraordinarily vehement support for policies whose banality is only matched by the puns. In the other, the massed hordes of the student body, unified by the exquisitely seething tide of stoic apathy and learnèd disconnect.

The truth is this: for all the admirable enthusiasm of the candidates and their faithful steeds, visibly boiling and sticking to the sides like overdone oxtail soup, there is an inescapable sense of futility and immediate aftermath to proceedings which mirrors the general impact they’ll have in the months ahead.

The sense of dread that surrounds the newly Omaha Beach-ified library entrance soon subsides (thanks headphones!), leaving behind only the emblems of a post-apocalyptic society, the walking elect and their adversaries staggering about in search of “votesssss…”, tattered posters and flyers littering walkways in a heap of unfulfilled promises.

In short, you’ll spend five days being made to care, somebody will get a dandy title for their CV, and you’ll be left with a sizeable remainder of 360 or so in which to continue on in blissful ignorance.

Sorted; now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got a Facebook notification to attend to.

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