April in Portland, ME … six inches of snow burying the crocuses, gallons of mud on the living room carpet, and the smells of freshly Xeroxed ballots for the Student Senate elections.
Ah yes, the intensely underpublicized Student Senate elections! There are elections? Who? What? Sometimes if people are passionate about a referendum there will be some campaigning to boost numbers, but of the 11,000 students at USM, how many actually stop and circle names on brightly colored pieces of paper? Last year of the 10,966 total enrollment at USM, 567 people voted in the elections, including 309 commuters and 258 residents. That is a little over 5 percent of the USM student population.
In this issue the Free Press ran a Question of the Week asking students if they were planning on voting in the elections. All three of the printed responses indicated a complete lack of knowledge of who was running.
Last year, too, the Senate elections were flanked with three referendum questions, all of which had fairly lively support for one side or the other. Referendum questions banning smoking, raising the student activity fee, and dismembering the Student Communications Board (which had quite a bit of campaigning against by The Free Press and WMPG) brought the masses to the polls.
But this year, there are no referenda. I’ve seen only one person hanging campaign posters. According to the Statement of Policy of the Student Election Commission, the names of the candidates and their contact information should be disseminated to student media in a timely fashion before elections. The Free Press didn’t even receive the list of people on the ballot until Saturday at 1 p.m. and it didn’t have any contact information.
So what happens then, if only 100 people show up to vote? Just the immediate family of candidates and someone wandering around aimlessly in the lobby of Luther Bonney Hall with nothing better to do?
It turns out that potentially you only need as many votes as you have fingers on one hand to win the election in a landslide. In fact, in this election there are fewer candidates than there are open seats. So, even though a candidate needed 20 signatures to get on the ballot, someone could potentially be written in by four of his friends and be in the top nine finishers for a commuter seat or top six for an at-large or resident seat.
Oh no, you miss the election! Still want to be on the Senate? All you need to do is be sponsored by a current senator, get interviewed on the Senate floor about what kind of tree you would be if you were of the arboreal persuasion, have one person vote for you, and poof! You’ve filled an empty Senate seat!
The major problem with this system is that it perpetuates the apathy that permeates the campuses. There is no campaigning; the Senate barely makes an effort to disseminate information about the candidates to the media. We don’t even know about the candidates or any potential issues at USM other than the fact we can’t find a place to park and the food is overpriced.
The Student Senate is responsible for the Student Activity Fee money which equals roughly between a quarter and a half million dollars. They disseminate this money to all the various Senate-affiliated organizations, including Senate committees, the Gorham and Portland Events Boards, GTV, Student Legal Services, The Free Press, WMPG, and others. Groups and individuals on campus go to the Senate asking for money for their causes and programs. That’s a lot of money and a lot of responsibility.
Is the student body aware that this is one of their primary responsibilities? Probably not. Who actually has interest in the mission statement of the USM Student Senate?
If it was more difficult to become a student senator, the need for more advertising would be there. More student awareness. More student involvement.
Many candidates for the Student Senate cited the lack of student involvement as one of the major problems at USM. What makes this campus potentially the most apathetic in the nation? Why out of 11,000 students can’t you find 21 people interested in participating in student government?
I think it is time for a change. I think a candidate should have to have at least 100 votes, not just signatures on a petition. Let’s put some urgency into it. Let’s drive the apathy out of the school starting with the Senate, which represents us as students. What happens if they don’t get 100 votes and seats on the Senate are left empty? You just need to do some heavy campaigning. Get people interested. Talk to everyone in your classes. Pass out stickers. My high school class officers who essentially did nothing but organize the prom ran better campaigns than the absolute nothing that most of the Senate candidates do here at USM.
The things we do here prepare us for the world. In the world, the candidates who campaign and talk about the issues in an open forum are far more likely to get elected and make a difference in this world than the people who fill out a form and sit back and wait for things to happen.
If these issues are brought to the forefront, if senators speak openly places other than the Senate floor, more students will be made aware and want to change things for the better.