Dear ASG presidential hopefuls,
I don’t know you, so before I can justly articulate my criticisms of you, I think a quick tip of the hat would be in order. It takes guts to run for an office that reeks irrelevant, and raw talent to make it seem more so.
Let’s talk strategy. This column might as well be just between the four of us, and you boys are in desperate need of some help before Wednesday. Because your Campaign Against Irrelevance is a bust in every regard except reinforcing the student body’s distrust and general apathy for you, as well as the organization you presumably hope to head.
I know the salvation through alienation routine when I see it. Self-deprecation might be flattering in small doses-introductions, interviews, idle chatter at a house party on Garnett on Saturday night-but as a slogan it’s unbecoming.
Boiled down, this year’s campaign has progressed as such:
1. Declare candidacy for ASG president.
2. Attack ASG.
3. ????
4. PROFIT!
Look familiar? Oh that’s right, if you strike ASG from step one and substitute Washington/Congress in step two, you wind up with the same platform the professionals use (True story. See: Barack Obama 2008 edition, The Romnatron, Rick Santorum, etc.).
Vilifying an abstraction in order to garner popular support can be super effective at a national level, where we have certain expectations of smoke blowing and frankly more is at stake. But it carries high risk of fatigue, and thus your major miscalculation. I speak for the students when I say no one wants more hot air from an already overinflated campus bureaucracy. No one needs you to waste your breath convincing us of the downfalls of student government. We’re convinced.
Continuing on this way can only further injure ASG’s reputation, which perpetuates the first problem by making it more tempting to campaign against. Two words: vicious cycle. Talking about it only makes it worse.
That said, a brief aside to the rest of our readers: If you haven’t caught on, there’s a long chain of necessities undergirding this entire column. Just as these three likely aspire to real political office, I aspire to real writerly worth (and another job for dental coverage). Who am I kidding? I need ASG, in all of its dumpiness. There’s neither enough space, nor magnet letters on my refrigerator for all of my one-liners. They need a home!
(Returning to scheduled programming…)
So please quit practicing your pandering and show me what ASG can accomplish on campus. I think it could be fairly effective, if only it was a little quieter. Scrap the plans for trying to connect with the student body as an amorphous whole. The rest of us can ‘express ourselves’ fine. There is no ‘Sheridan Road effect.’
But there are real pertinent, solvable problems that require little more than one head, two shoulders and a plan. Tell you what: I will vote for the first candidate who pitches even a remotely practical proposal for giving campus a facelift out of the early 1980s. Or whoever lays out a voter registration campaign so that we the students, four-year Evanston residents, can kick Mayor Tisdahl out of office.
Of course, at the core of the problem is that as long as it is, for lack of better phrasing, an all-volunteer force, the people that choose to fill the positions will remain the same. A degree of self-importance is unavoidable. These aren’t the student body presidents from high school, when it was still a popularity contest in purest form (the popular kids ran).
No. These are the people that lost to the popular kids. The ones that actually get excited about obsessively timed floor rebuttals, bulleted action statements and tall, oak lecterns. They are the geeks! Come to exact their vengeance. Because geeks love the pomp, the circumstance and the ceremony of student government. Consequently, said bullet points often aren’t enough to ensure duties get carried out.
Alternatively, perhaps ASG should simply abandon all its attempts at being democratic. I am not terribly concerned about safeguarding my liberties from its authoritarian, oppressive geek regime.
Maybe then, unconcerned with establishing grassroots appeal, it could implement a real, progressive vision. I don’t know. Surprise me.
In the meantime, so long as ASG and its candidates choose to play dress-up, admittedly or not, I choose to play pundit. Also, Ani Ajith for supreme chancellor in 2013.
Sincerely,
Peter
Peter Larson is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected]
