This may be a shock to some of you AU Eagles, but this school attracts a fair amount of political junkies. I say this at the risk of offending all of the literature and biology majors here, but political science is what really pays the bills.
This comes with pros and cons. It's nice to be on an activist campus where students pretend to care, but it's fairly obvious that they're just pretending. The General Assembly, AU's undergraduate student-body legislature, is notorious for in-fighting and not getting anything done. The Student Confederation, the student government, is a fun time, but clearly ineffective at getting anything done. Both the GA and SC serve one important purpose: resum padding.
Which brings us to the upcoming SC elections. This has always been my favorite time of the year. Why? Because it clearly paints me as a hypocrite. I spend a lot of time making fun of these elections, but I always end up getting carried away and helping someone put up posters or wearing illegal campaign stickers within the apolitical walls of TDR.
This year probably won't be any different.
However, there is still another two weeks before a whopping 400 students walk into the Mary Graydon Center to cast their ballots. So, there is plenty of time to mock the elections before I end up voting for my candidate of choice.
I suppose the big story of this election cycle is the arson attack on that Polson Kanneth/ Jason Trombley sign outside of MGC. I'm not the type to advocate arson, especially when it involves the presidential candidate I am most likely to vote for. But, I must admit, I am kind of glad that someone is taking matters into his own hands. It's another two weeks before the election and you're both running for offices that just don't matter. Everyone knows that no one gives a damn about these elections until the end of the month anyway. Signs on the Quad are annoying and unsightly, so cut it out.
If the signs are being burned down because of political motivations, then the situation is all the more hilarious. Do you think that a candidate has a personal Karl Rove running around using dirty political tricks? If so, that would be really friggin' awesome. My money would have been on Noah Black and his College Democrats henchmen. No one would ever suspect a Democrat of emulating Karl Rove. Alas, he has dropped out of the race to pursue an internship. Thank God. I think we're all in agreement that the Haley Stevens fiasco - when she won SC president last year, only to resign to spend a year in England - should never be repeated.
This leads to an excellent transition to my other point about how stupid these elections are: Political endorsements. I love it when the College Democrats and the College Republicans (and the completely useless College Libertarians) endorse a candidate. Endorsements imply that the candidates have different platforms. We all know that's not true.
Every single candidate supports the exact same things. Lowering tuition (this will never happen), lowering parking fees, getting Public Safety off our backs, flipping the bird to e-Follett and its evil bookstore and other generalized topics. Great. I can totally see where the Democrats and Republicans fit into this. It's not like we're dealing with tax rebates and abortions here.
I haven't even tackled the vice president, secretary or comptroller positions yet. There really is no need. People just vote for their friends or their friend's friends. It's all quite silly. Yet, some people care so much that they are willing to burn down posters. You almost have to respect people this crazy. Almost.
