Author: Riley Hooper
I didn’t vote in the ASOC elections and I’m proud of it. I never thought I’d hear those words come out of my mouth, but I truly mean it. While I’m all about engaging in the democratic process and casting my vote, another thing I’m all about is educated decisions.
Within the past week or so, I’ve been checking out the campaign posters around campus and perusing the ASOC website for candidate names, awaiting more information-but it never came. So when election day rolled around, all I had to base my vote off were these two things-posters and a brief explanation of the candidate’s position on the ASOC website. It has come to my attention, after voting day has passed and the results are in, that some ASOC candidates did partake in speeches. I had no idea! On the ASOC 2007 Elections Guidelines webpage, it does indeed state that “the Elections Committee shall provide for any public forums of speeches to which the candidates agree.” Candidates had the option to do speeches, some of them took it, some of them didn’t. This is all I know. I’d like to think of myself as an informed member of the student body when it comes to campus events-for the sheer fact that you can’t go anywhere on this campus without being bombarded with a poster advertising the upcoming events on campus. Yet, I never heard a single thing about ASOC elections speeches. Perhaps they were very informing, but I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there.
As far as I was concerned, as I did not listen to any speeches, the ASOC election process proved nothing of a candidate’s worth beyond petty factors such as popularity, poster making and writing skills. Once a candidate proves he has 20 or 40 friends who would sign his preliminary petition, he proceeds to be voted into office based on irrelevant criteria. People end up voting for their friends, the person who wrote the most intriguing platform on the ASOC website or perhaps the person who made eye-catching posters.
If I had voted, my reasoning would have gone something like this: “Ah yes, I took Geek Toys with him last semester, so yes, I do believe he should be the next ASOC president,” or “She made a pretty poster, so I guess I’ll vote for her.” I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
The whole process undermines the important role the ASOC plays at Oxy. As a first-year, I thought student elections might be different in college. We at least had formal, mandatory speeches for student elections at my high school-and that was high school. I guess I was wrong in my assumptions that collegiate student body elections would move beyond the popularity contest they had been all my life.
I could be totally off base, but I’m pretty sure an ASOC position at Occidental College holds more responsibility than a student government position did at my high school. Therefore, at the very least, the collegiate election process should surpass that of the high school and include mandatory speeches that more than a small percentage of the student body attends. All I’m asking for is a bit more information to make an educated decision and to move past the juvenile election process I thought I left behind when I graduated high school.
As of now, the process is a joke. It undermines my role as an educated voter, is unfair to candidates who wish to be voted into office for worthy reasons and devalues the importance of the positions of our ASOC student government which hold great responsibility and influence on our campus.
Riley Hooper is an Undeclared first-year and a Staff Writer for the Weekly. She can be reached at rhooper@oxy.edu
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