For the past five years, a party made up of Student Association (SA) officials has run in the SA executive board and SUNY SA delegate elections, which will be held this spring. This party has gone under various names (Results Party, Momentum Party, and Elevation Party, to name a few), but all have shared two defining characteristics.
First off, the SA-incumbent party nearly always runs as a full ticket, running candidates for each position available: SA president, vice-president, treasurer, and four SUNY SA delegate spots.
Secondly, they never lose.
In the Spring 2001 SA elections, then-SA Treasurer Chris Oliver and then-SA Communications Director Josh Korman took the presidency and vice-presidency, respectively. Since that election, no SA-incumbent party member has lost a bid for an e-board position.
Rumor on the third floor of the Student Union has it that this year will be no different, with most current speculators pointing to a ticket that would include current SA Senate Chair Viqar Hussain as a presidential candidate and Leslie Meister, the current SA Student Affairs director.
Both current and past SA officials have maintained that this is a positive trend, because it ensures that the student leaders in charge of SA’s $2.7 million budget (which comes from the mandatory student activity fee we all pay every semester) have experience within the system and proven leadership skills.
Some student commentators have taken a different view. In March 2003, Sarah Groden wrote in a letter to The Spectrum: “For the past two years, SA has remained on the same track, promising to get new students involved and make changes,” she wrote, “Yet the only thing that changes is the person making those promises.” Groden’s sentiments have been echoed over the last few years in further letters to The Spectrum, editorials, and in last year’s Generation election endorsements, in which we endorsed no one for the lack of a qualified outsider.
To be honest, this year I’m just looking for a good fight. I want to see multiple parties of qualified candidates slugging it out for a chance at the $10,000-a-year stipends, free cell phones, and student-funded conferences at the Toronto Hilton that come with being the top dogs in our student government—not to mention the 40-plus hour work weeks.
Go to the SA office at 350 Student Union and pick up a petition to run for president/vice-president, treasurer, or SUNY SA delegate. Prez and VP candidates have to run on the same ticket and require 150 signatures from daytime undergraduate students to get on the ballot. Those seeking the treasurer or delegate position must get 75 signatures. All petitions are due at High Noon on Wednesday, March 8. All candidates must be full-time undergraduates in “good academic standing,” meaning a cumulative GPA of at least 2.0, the same GPA for your most recent semester, and completion of at least 75 percent of all credit hours registered for at UB.
Maybe the SA-incumbent party currently being put together really does have the most qualified candidates. Maybe they’ll just win again anyway because they’ll be the most organized, having months to prepare for the campaign. Maybe the tiny sliver of the student population that takes a long enough break from Madden tournaments and bong hits to actually vote will cast their ballot for experience over outsider status.
Maybe.
Make them work for it. Get involved in the process, get some signatures, tell your friends—hell, start a party. Consider this an open challenge to all fraternity presidents, team captains, club coordinators, student publication editors, and student leaders of all stripes: What you got? You’re only as qualified as the person you become by gambling on your potential.
Democracy ceases to be democratic when the people refuse the right to participate in their own system of government. What do you have to lose? Hell, the worst thing that could happen is you could win—and be vilified by Generation editorials for months for your lack of experience.
Don’t Wear Sandals and Try to Avoid the Scandals,
Jacob Drum
Associate Editor
