Election Coverage – why should I care?

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is elections week, and to be quite frank with you, I have no idea what is going on.

I know for a fact that I am not alone in feeling this way. I am not informed enough to talk to you about the politics of the SU, but that is the very point of my article today.

Being an editor of The Boar, and on exec of another society, I spend a lot of my time in the SU. Yet I feel totally disengaged with it. I do not think it is an uncommon experience for students to pass through the University, and have little interaction with the SU other than going to Pop.

I feel totally disengaged

I am sure that a lot of what the SABBS do, and the SU at large, is not necessarily seen. But is this not a problem in itself? My personal experience as one student is: I do not know what the SU/SABB team does for me, I do not feel represented by the people elected, and I do not think that the election process is effective or fair, seeing as less than 25% of us voted last year.

The elections happen in such a short space of time, and if you have the time to read 36 manifestos then kudos to you. It becomes about a popularity contest between a group of people who all know each other, and the rest of us have to go by what we might see on campus or what is said to us in lectures. Thus, people either do not vote, or end up feeling no connection at all to the people representing us.

Less than 25% of us voted last year

How then am I expected to vote in this election? Now, part of this is undoubtedly my own fault. I admit that a lot of this is on me and my own lack of engagement with what the SU does, but I also think it is a two-way street. Sometimes the SU website is not logical. I just went online as I wrote this to try and find the page with a drop down list of the nominations, and it was not immediately obvious. I am expected to vote for these people, and the information is not easily accessible.

I do not have time to troll through the SU website. I have classes, an essay to write, and society commitments. If the SU wants student engagement, the information needs to be easily accessible and concise.

A lot of this is on me and my own lack of engagement

Additionally, I do not love that lectures are being interrupted for people to come and talk to us. I know this is a way to directly reach students, but I get eight contact hours a week, and I do not really want to give part of that up for something I do not really feel invested in.

I do not pretend to have all the answers, nor are the candidates the people I am directing my frustration at. But, I think the key issue is the lack of engagement with the student body. This is an annual problem which the SU seriously needs to address. Putting a count down to election week on the Piazza big screen is not going to solve the problem. It is the collective responsibility of the members of this university to improve the process of these elections and the system the candidates operate in.

The key issue is the lack of engagement with the student body

I think we need a longer campaign time, and different methods need to be used to get people engaged. Information needs to be more easily accessible online, but also in a more condensed form so people can get the real information they need to make an informed choice. We also need more evidence of how this team, and the SU generally, affects our time at university. Students might then be more inclined to engage if they felt like their vote was doing something productive for their own experiences as students.