We beat Nick Saban, and our reward was an extra hour of sleep or an extra hour at the bars, if you choose to see it that way. It’s Homecoming week, Pakistan is in chaos and 900,000 homes in Mexico have been flooded. I could be writing about how O.J. Simpson is going to jail – and deservedly so – or about Dog, The Great White Hunter. All of the above said, the focus of this column is the upcoming Student Government elections. I just heard most of you groan. I didn’t even know about these elections until a fellow columnist informed me of such this past Thursday. SG elections are two days away, for the 30,000 of you who didn’t know, and SG deserves the same, if not a little more, coverage as any other issue, no matter how little people care. Ashlea Edwards cares, however. As a member of the Taking Action ticket, Edwards is seeking a Student Senate seat for the College of Arts and Sciences. To show how qualified she actually is, here is a passage from her Facebook.com group about her campaign. “I am running for an Arts and Sciences position in the LSU Student Senate. I really would like to make a difference and be a voice for the students of the College of Arts and Sciences. I would like to be an active member of the Arts and Sciences community, and by doing this, I feel I will understand better the beliefs and opinions of these students. By understanding these things, I will be able to be a better voice for this college. If I am elected, I will make sure that the voice of A&S is heard and is reflected in student life and policies. I am a member of the Taking action…” Does your head hurt? Mine does. The Taking Action ticket has set up shop in Free Speech Alley, educating students about how accountability must be restored in SG. Before turning students into accountabili-buddies, however, I’ve got to know your platform, what stance the candidates take and what “action” would actually be “taken.” If there was another ticket to criticize, I haven’t found them. Apparently, SG hasn’t found the other ticket either. On the SG Web site, under “Upcoming Election,” is a list of key dates for the Fall 2007 Election. Not one mention is made about what offices are up for election or what candidates are running for said offices. In SG’s mind, it doesn’t matter who you cast your vote for as long as you vote. The winners of this election will be the candidates who can rally their 70 friends together to install them into the Senate – the same Senate that decides the collective fate of budgets, approved organizations, technology rates and fee increases. The elections are managed by the SG Election Board, which strives, according to the SG Web site, “to provide guidelines to ensure honest elections, ensure fairness and unbiased rulings to all candidates and hold candidates to the highest level of accountability.” The list of members of the board, on the other hand, is long and cumbersome: Jacob Gower. That’s it. According to SG, Gower is the Election Board. Except through hearsay, the students don’t know who they are voting for until election day, and it is in this sense that SG has failed its constituents. Members of SG will be quick to interject, most notably President Cassie Alsfeld, who in the middle of “tiradegate,” asserted that there are many things SG does that aren’t covered by The Daily Reveille or other student media. She isn’t wrong, for once, on this issue. But will the students listen to a Senate-authored resolution seeking to place more signs banning bikes from the Quad? To find the answer, look for me – and my bike – in the Quad. Elections, however, should merit campus wide discussion, but the tone of students I’ve talked to has been either dismissive or apathetic. SG should not leave it to campus media to cover elections only SG members care about. They should be making a better attempt to reach out to the student body, regardless of the “ignorance” of the students. The Taking Action ticket acknowledges this in its platform: “We know that you think SG is a waste of time. We’d like to give you a reason to think otherwise.” In summary, members of the student body, I urge you to vote Nov. 7 for members of the Senate. It won’t matter who you vote for. But if no one votes, SG will become irrelevant, and Lord knows we can’t have an irrelevant Student Government. Oh wait…
—-Contact Eric Freeman at [email protected]