Our view: Our desire for the outcome of the election and the appeals process is for it to result in a better run and more efficient Student Government Association, not for any one candidate to win over the other.
As soon as the smoke cleared and winners of the Student Government Association election were named, another heated battled ensued over contesting the election results.
While a winner will be named either way, the ultimate goal of everyone involved—from the candidates to the senators and the faculty advisers—should be to improve the process for next year’s election.
It may certainly be a pipe dream to hope for an election where candidates run soley on the basis of their accomplishments and not on the shortcomings or personal lives of their opponents, but we can at least push for improving the process itself.
As stated by Keith Lamb, vice president for academic affairs and enrollment management, SGA has “some gaps in their bylaws” that need filling. That has already started with the recent drafting of official Election Board hearing procedures, but the process of improvement is never ending.
We are, after all, students who come to this school for, more or less, the same goal: To gain an education we can one day parlay into a career. So mistakes will be made, but what counts is that we learn from them.
Individually, candidates should learn to be careful about what they post on social media as our digital shadows follow us for life, but conversely, candidates should understand that this is just a student government race and there are long-lasting consequences beyond each election.
Dragging an opponent’s personal life into the limelight in a bid to discredit his or her campaign can have life-altering consequences on that candidate. It would be a shame for the animosity of one SGA election to permanently and negatively influence the lives and career goals of its candidates.
If we knew last week what we know now, we probably would not have endorsed any of the presidential candidates but instead nominated a new candidate, like the 500-million-year-old rock on campus, or Santa Claus.
At least the rock is too old to even know what Facebook is, and Santa would have been too busy adding our current candidates to his naughty list to have dug up some dirt on his opponents.