Each spring, students at the University of Michigan have the opportunity to vote for candidates for Central Student Government (CSG). In debates, the candidates tackle important issues like diversity and food insecurity on campus.
However, this year, one candidate stood out from all the rest: His name is Reggie Bee, and although he wasn’t officially on the ballot, he got fourth place in the CSG 2018 Presidential Elections, with 1,403 votes as a write-in.
Oh, and a fun fact about Reggie? He’s a corgi.
Reggie is a *very* good boy, and he’s a trained therapy and service dog whose owner frequently takes him to walk around campus. Most students at U of M know him by name, and he’s about as iconic on campus as Jim Harbaugh himself. In fact, he has over 4,000 Facebook friends!
Reggie’s presidential campaign began in a private Facebook group for University of Michigan student-memers, where Reggie has long been a topic of conversation. As election season ramped up, students used memes to encourage each other to write-in “Reggie Bee” for CSG President.
Eventually, Reggie’s campaign had its own Facebook page, “Reggie Bee For CSG President.” Reggie’s page quickly became the most-liked page out of all of the CSG candidate Facebook pages.
On March 17, he posted, “I know many of you have been pressing me and my staff for a platform, but there is only one thing you all need to know is I will continue to bring happiness and joy to all of my Facebook friends/followers as well as the greater UMICH Community. May Doggo boop you all and may Doggo boop the University of Michigan.”
The news about Reggie began to spread across the country, and the meme Facebook group continued to most memes encouraging one another to vote for Reggie.
However, Reggie’s campaign came to a sad end on March 21, when he resigned from his campaign and officially endorsed human candidates.
“Because some of my good human friends are ‘truly’ running for Student Government President, I’ve decided to ask all my friends to get out and Vote for Them,” he said in a Facebook post. “They deserve your support in their sincere desire to become leaders of the student body. I’m now returning to simply running with my little doggo friend.”
The University Elections Commission sent out an official email saying, “At least one write in candidate (who has four legs) is ineligible to hold office. As good of a boy as he might be, he is unfortunately not a student of the University of Michigan, and therefore cannot win an elected position.”
Around this time, Reggie also began to receive pushback from memers in the Facebook group.
But when students are inspired to make campus good-er again, nothing can stop them. Despite Reggie’s resignation, students encouraged each other to write him in as a candidate as soon as the polls opened.
On Friday, March 23rd, The Michigan Daily announced that Daniel Greene and Izzy Baer had been elected CSG President and Vice President. After a long and exhausting campaign, Reggie had come in fourth place. But this isn’t the end for this good boy.
“What’s next? Encourage our electors to keep a happy face on students politics,” Reggie’s people told Her Campus on Monday. “We have had suggestions to run for campus ambassador. We’ve learned to put the self interest of others above our own.”
To Our President, Reggie Bee —— Thank you for giving us hope in our future. Thank you for being our #GoodBoy everyday. You forever will be our President. We will dig into the process that resulted in 4th place. That’s a load of crap. Don’t smell the crap. We love you -BB
— Barstool Blue (@BarstoolUofM) March 24, 2018
Winning isn’t everything, and we’re excited to see this doggo make a positive change on campus.
Memes credit Emily Levy, Harrison McCabe, Jess Xinyi Liu, and Suzy Wang.