With only four days left until students start casting ballots, the controversies and contrivances in the Student Body president race are enough to drown out all the other races combined. So it’s refreshing to see candidates for at least one office running a relatively low-key campaign, filled with serious debate on serious issues. That’s what we’ve got in the race for student chief justice.

Unlike the majority of universities in the country, the NCSU Judicial Board has no real role within Student Government. Its central mission is to act as judge, jury and executioner with respect to violations of the University’s Code of Student Conduct — undoubtedly an important task, just one usually reserved to a more important body than a subset of a student-run organization. Given that background, candidates for chief justice routinely go unopposed, often after being “encouraged” to take the reins. But with this year’s recent conflicts, we finally have a real competition for student votes between two worthy contenders:

* “The Enforcer:” Although her campaign’s voluntary comparison to a horse initially raised some eyebrows, Lee “Action” Jackson of the College of Engineering is running on a platform of preserving the Judicial Board’s current practices and making them stronger. She promotes aggressively publicizing the J-Board and Code of Student Conduct to, in her words, “put the SCJ out of a job:” with more students aware of potential consequences, fewer lapses in judgment would be made and the need for the J-Board itself would diminish with time. A J-Board member since fall 2004, Jackson also hopes to develop a lecture series for the public on issues going beyond just academic integrity.

Jackson’s critics support her zeal, but argue she is too much of an “insider” for the position. And on a campus where the name “Paul Cousins” frequently elicits commentary unfit for republication in a family-friendly newspaper like Technician, Jackson’s opposition to re-evaluating standards of proof (“the more lax policy proposed by my opponent,” she said) and related issues does little to counter that charge.

But for a process that has essentially gone unchanged for years and still seems to work just fine, look for Jackson to argue that radical changes aren’t needed in the first place.

* “The Advocate:” Yet if people claim his opponent is too much of an “insider,” Lock Whiteside of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences could be considered the “un-insider.” Also a member of the Judicial Board since fall 2004, Whiteside’s campaign has included some of the same publicity ideas as Jackson. But Whiteside has otherwise taken a different approach to the election, focusing on iniquity in the current J-Board’s processes. If the J-Board can levy punishments that make a tangible impact on students’ lives, Whiteside argues, “Those students should be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Whiteside also suggests creating a student advocate position like those at other universities, and he highlights his experience in all three branches of Student Government as critical in rebuilding the frayed relations between J-Board and the rest of SG.

But where Whiteside considers his Student Government experiences strengths, some detractors claim it’s the best reason not to vote for him. With neither the Student Senate nor Executive Branch winning any “Politician of the Year” awards from the student body any time soon, Whiteside’s critics insist he is fruit from a tainted tree that would defile the traditional sanctity of the Judicial Board’s processes.

For those dissatisfied with the J-Board’s conduct, however, expect Whiteside’s blunt assessment of administrators and student leaders alike to be the most compelling argument in his favor.

Unlike the Senate president or student body president, whoever serves as the student chief justice next year will get little limelight or attention from the student body. But also unlike those positions, the chief justice will be in a position to tweak a process that has been in place for years, or promote meaningful change in an area where change has never seriously been promoted before. In either case, the office could become the most consequential position in Student Government — at least for next year. Choose wisely.

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