During NC State Student Government’s runoff election for student body president and vice president, all eyes were on candidates Alberto Quiroga and Zach Lewis.

Instagram posts of racially and politically insensitive posts involving Lewis surfaced. Then an article was posted on the Facebook Group “NC State Class of 2018” claiming Quiroga’s comments directed toward now Student Body President-elect Jess Errico during the runoff debate were misogynistic.

Both Quiroga and Lewis were attacked online after these posts surfaced, clearly affecting their campaign resulting in their loss to Errico and running mate Meredith Spence Beaulieu. Although the race is over, I am still troubled by the way Quiroga and Lewis were unfairly treated during their campaign.

The students who decided to run for Student Government do not suddenly become faceless talking heads as soon as they nominate themselves for a position. They are still members of the Wolfpack. They are your classmates. They are your peers. The heated and divisive rhetoric seen in our nation’s politics should not be implemented during a university election.

We are living during the most politically polarized time with a president who remains controversial, an untrustworthy Congress, and a rise of “Fake News.” And somehow we have brought these types of divisive elements onto NC State’s campus with our Student Government elections.

We have turned a simple NC State student election into one that resembles the aggressive 2016 United States presidential election. We have taken Lewis’ friendship with someone who voted for Trump and called him prejudiced. We have taken Quiroga’s questioning of Errico’s time commitment and called him a misogynist. We are stretching these situations and making rash conclusions from them. 

Regarding the Instagram posts involving Lewis, I understand why people would be upset by their contents. However, to expect Lewis to stop being friends with someone because of the way they voted or because of the political shirt they wore one day is an unrealistic expectation.

If I decided to ostracize myself completely from anyone who voted for Trump, I would not be able to interact with family members, classmates, club members, coworkers or even professors. It’s not possible. The fact that Lewis was criticized for being friends with someone who supported Trump — and Lewis has said that he does not agree with these beliefs — is such a stretch to insult his character. 

Now regarding Quiroga’s question during the runoff debate, the question was very poorly worded. Quiroga’s question was not meant to insult Errico’s marriage but prompt a discussion on time commitment. The question was not misogynistic simply because Quiroga is an unmarried man and Errico is a married woman.

No matter the gender of the candidates, the question of time commitment in regards to marital status most likely would have come up during a debate. If Quiroga or Lewis was a married student, their time commitment would also be put into question. The fact that an all-male ticket was campaigning against an all-female ticket does not mean that a criticism is consequently a critique on their gender.

Quiroga, Lewis, Errico and Spence Beaulieu were all qualified candidates, and their platforms and goals should have been what was discussed during the campaigns. The online backlash Quiroga and Lewis received was not appropriate for a student election.

During our current political climate, we are sadly getting used to ad hominems in our rhetoric, and we are ignoring what is actually important — the issues. Instead of talking about NC State students’ mental health or better parking on campus, we talked about a photo that a candidate’s friend tagged him in.

We cannot bring this kind of divisiveness we saw in the 2016 presidential election and put it on an NC State Student Government election. NC State’s elections involve real students, not career politicians loaded with lobbyists’ money. They are students who are going to class, looking for jobs, and trying to make NC State a better university, and we should not be attacking our student body candidates in this way.