This past week, the buzz around campus was all about the Clark Undergraduate Student Council elections that took place over the course of two days. It’s more than likely that even if you knew nothing else about the elections, you knew something was going on with them based on the arguments taking place over social media. There were countless posts in many of the class specific Clark Facebook groups and in the full student body group as well. So what was all the commotion about?
The first issue at hand was that the process for petitioning to be on the election ballot changed to a paperless, electronic system. This meant that a few individuals who wanted their names to be on the ballot for voting did not make it on for various reasons. In turn, there was a surge of write-in campaigns, which is what started the turmoil leading up to the elections. Multiple people took to social media to talk about the change in the petition system and what they felt was wrong about it, as well as to promote various write-in candidates and campaigns.
The CUSC Elections Committee sent the following email addressing these issues to all Clark undergraduates prior to the election:
“Due to the large amount of expressed interest by individuals for write in candidacies the Elections Committee would like clarify the official decision on standards for complete and countable votes. Should you so choose to write in a candidate please take care to write in the candidate’s full first and last name for total clarity in the ballot cast. Alternatively, the full first name with the first initial of the candidate’s last name will be accepted, but the former is preferred over the latter. We thank you all in advance for taking part in this election and for making your voices heard.”
So, what did everyone think about the election process? We asked a few Clarkies who weren’t directly involved with the election to weigh in and here is what they said:
“I think it was silly the way people didn’t work together during the election, especially the juniors who would have won if they shared a ticket instead of splitting the votes for president between similar friends.” – Rachel
“I got a lot of messages asking who I voted for because people didn’t know or care. It’s frustrating how the blast of campaigning and slander turned everyone off from the elections.” – Jess
“I got friend requests from people campaigning just so they could send messages to me to [get me to] vote for them. It was actually kind of offensive.” – Nora
“It’s super important to vote, but it’s also hard when candidates rely on social media. I don’t have a Facebook, so I didn’t really know what was going on.” – Kyle
“When there is so much going wrong in our presidential election for the United States, it’s sad to see CUSC emulate the same traits.” – Jordan
What were your thoughts on the elections? Let us know in the comments!