CommenTATE

The biggest sign wins the race.

It’s that time of year, where candidates for the Freshman Class Board and Undergradudate Assembly are lining up. I’ve seen some of you in the dining hall campaigning and I want you to know that I’ve been there before. I lost, but I learned some things from my opponents:

1) The amount of campaign expenditures is capped at $50. Use it all. If you don’t have $50, it’s easy to acquire: go down the hall, knock on everyone’s door and ask for a dollar. I did this for at least half. No problem.

2) Flyer the dining halls heavily.

3) Try to gain access to a course listserv. The NEC forbids you from using a “class-wide” or “class-wide/school-wide” listserv. Remember, though, you “must ask the instructor’s permission” first.

4) Skip campaigning at the college houses named Rodin, Harnwell, and Harrison — these are the hi-rises, primarily upperclassmen. Focus on Ware, Riepe, and Fisher Hassenfeld — the Quad. The college house with the most freshmen is usually Hill. Cash in on this jackpot first. Hill House is like Iowa for U.S. politics–you only want to be there during campaign season. After getting out the vote at Hill and the Quad, plan a special visit to Kings Court.

5) If you live in Hill and you are running, jump in QUICK. Don’t waste time. If there are more than 3 people running, talk some of them into exiting the race (i.e. ‘you’ll always have my ear once I win’). Otherwise the vote will be split and someone living in another college house will end up winning (I know this well because there were about 5 of us running from Hill). And even if they don’t seem competitive in Hill they will at least garner 50 votes by fact of living on a highly-populated hall. That’s 50 votes you could have.

Look for more tips from the trench on Monday.

CommenTATE appears every Monday and Friday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.