After sitting in on the Student Body President forum, I came to realize a few things: one, despite the copyright infringement that runs rampant across campus in the form of campaign advertising, nobody is getting free Bojangles anytime soon. Two, these candidates aren’t as in tune with the issues as I originally thought. During the forum, I was taken aback by the redundancy of the responses and the lack of creativity. To be honest, the most gripping part of the night was Snookie’s guest appearance as a time warning.

Many of the candidates emphasized the importance of student government accessibility, and yet, the forum was held in the student senate chamber. Not exactly what I would call accessible. On top of that, the rules of the forum were not outlined at the beginning and Chandler Thompson’s attempt at a rebuttal- although not actually a legitimate rebuttal according to any kind of parliamentary procedure- was almost misplaced in the discourse. The few people who did attend were not allowed to ask questions, which in my opinion, kind of defeated the purpose of having a student audience and a forum to begin with. To be honest, I have a lot of questions for the candidates.

Why, when you campaign on the platform of sustainability, do you print off thousands of flyers and spam campus with campaign sandwich boards? Hypocritical much? Why do you say that you want to decrease student apathy, but campaigns and platforms are almost exclusive in nature? And, specifically for Chandler: You were very enthusiastic about the effectiveness of surveys in hearing the student voice.

That’s interesting to me because less than 5,000 students vote in student government elections, and somehow you think that students are going to participate in your ‘student voice’ surveys? I think that’s doubtful at best. Sending out a survey isn’t going to get students involved, nor is it a novel idea in any way.

The candidate that intrigued me most was Alex Grindstaff, he consistently challenged the current practices of student government and emphasized that students come before student government on his agenda. In sum, I encourage the student body not to vote simply on hopes of free chicken or name recognition, but instead, to do some research before you vote, you may be surprised at what you find.

  Kelly Cox, sophomore political science and natural resources