The pathetic 1.5 percent student-voter turnout in the race for student body president must be addressed and then solved. If numbers continue to decrease, shared governance on this campus will no longer include students.
The Channels suggests that there be better structure within the college. Senators should be propped up at meetings and given a voice, paid, and instructed on how to get their message out there.
The blame for this paltry turnout rests primarily on students’ shoulders.
The Channels ran a front-page article introducing candidates. It also included instructions on how to vote.
Administrators set up the election through Pipeline so students could vote from home, any time of day, for five days.
Yet apparently it was all too much to bother with.
Pitiful.
Lately this sort of student apathy has begged the question: Is it really worth moving forward with the nearly $400,000 Student Success Initiative when it’s becoming increasingly clear that even when spoon-fed, students don’t care?
Think about it:
Will additional tutors help, or will they sit idle? Will an expanded orientation aid students, or will visions of keggers dance in their heads? Will stressing reading and writing actually improve it, or will textbooks continue to act as beer-can coasters?
But students are not the only ones to blame for voter turnout.
The e-mail notifying them of the election had no subject line. It’s a common precautionary practice to delete e-mails with no subject, especially if they are delivered to the “trash” folder, as most forwarded election e-mails are.
The college should have sent a second round of e-mails with a proper subject line. Next time, make sure it works.
But an overall systemic problem plagues the college’s student government. Students at large think there’s nothing they can do to influence school government. Keeping in mind the student senate’s short list of accomplishments, and policy-changing decisions, who can blame them?
In fairness to the student senate, each member’s most vital role is to attend committee meetings and act as the student voice when the real college politicians are hiking up our health fees or erecting new fountains.
Student senators should be paid, so they can put in the necessary time and effort to be at these meetings. Time spent here is time away from an off-campus job. The rent money has to come from somewhere.
In looking at these problems, one thing is clear – success breeds success. The senate’s failure to publicize its candidates, and the college’s failure to effectively send election e-mails, continues to breed failure.