Two years ago, if you had asked me if I voted in the Student Association elections, I would have laughed at you. I would have responded, "Dude, I barely made the cut-off date to send in my absentee ballot for the last presidential election, why should I vote for some chump kid, so he can pad his resume?"
During the last two years working at The Spectrum, I have become one of the 16 people on campus who gets excited during a good SA or GSA election. Yet nearly all of the elections in the last two years - I say two years, because that's about when I opened my eyes and realized there is a government on campus - have been plagued with controversy. I have yet to see a good election begin at UB, although the complications and end results are often what make them great.
Compiled below are selected highlights from UB's stellar election record.
The scandals of the SA general election, 2002: The Results Party, the party of current SA President Chris Oliver, filed a libel suit against opponents the UB Students' Party, claiming wording on their campaign posters was slanted and malicious. The Elections and Credentials Committee found the UB Students' Party guilty.
That same year, Jason Litwak, presidential candidate for the UB Students' Party, contested the eligibility of New York State Student Assembly (now SUNY SA) candidate Yesenia Diaz, after she failed to attend a mandatory meeting, due to "extenuating circumstances." The Elections and Credentials Committee ruled her candidacy legitimate.
The on-again-off-again University Council election: The University Council elections of 2002 were unforgettable, after one of the candidates pulled out of the election in a letter published in The Spectrum, due to improper planning, confusion about election times and a poor online voting system. The candidate, Brendan Keene, later contested the election in front of the Elections Committee, which upheld the original results. The election was overturned during the summer, and a new election was held in the fall of 2002, in which only one student ran.
GSA elections, round one: The Graduate Student Association election was overturned in 2002, after allegations surfaced that a candidate allegedly bribed students with clothing in exchange for votes and had used other students' person numbers to vote for himself in the online elections. It was also alleged that the vice presidential candidate violated election rules by improperly using GSA materials to send campaign posters to the home addresses of members of the GSA. A new election was held in the fall of 2002 - with paper ballots this time - where an entirely different executive board was elected.
Gooberna-what? The New York State gubernatorial elections for 2002 pulled in a whopping 137 students to the on-campus polls. Though the only students eligible were those living in Ellicott, Governors and Hadley Village, that's still only 137 who made it to the polls. Awesome; thank goodness students equally don't care about statewide elections and on-campus ones.
GSA elections, round two: The GSA elections - in which just over 7 percent of the eligible students voted - concluded last week, still abuzz with controversy. One of the presidential candidates, Kannan Nagarajan, filed 17 complaints with the Elections and Credentials committee about the validity of the election. GSA has, in turn, filed a number of complaints in response. The jury is still out on the GSA election, and I am sure we'll find out about it soon.
That brings us to the 2003 SA general elections. I feel there's almost no need to recap, because if you've gotten this far into the article, you are one of the other 15 people who realize there are elections on campus. So you probably know that this year, The Spectrum is the one bringing objections about the shoddy way the election was run.
No, we didn't win our referendum, and I can see how, to the outside world, it seems like The Spectrum is acting like a child, complaining because it didn't get its way. And heck, maybe there's a little piece of us that is. I think there's a part of every losing party in an election that wants to find a way to get some justice, but that isn't our reasoning.
I, for one, am sick of seeing election after election derailed by grievances about the poor quality of the way in which the election was run. We don't want vindication from this. We don't want pity. We don't want $6 and a packet of ketchup (thanks, though, Generation.) We don't want to smite the evils of student governments. We want there to be a more fair election next time around.
The people who run elections are students. The people who run in elections are students. With every complaint, the election process gets stronger, it gets to be more refined, and we don't make the same mistakes that we made the time before. Our elections this year were far more sound than they were several years ago, and it's because of the complaints of students who care enough to make sure the system is correct.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
