CommenTATE
I hope you’ve absorbed the methods for storming into class office from Friday’s post. I promised more:
6) Rub shoulders with the Daily Pennsylvanian and find a reporter who’s willing to cover a “press conference” that you hold in a rented out classroom or college house common room.
7) Discuss policies that are impracticable but that everyone wants nonetheless: longer dining hours, better food, PennCard access at every propriety store on campus, air conditioning in Hill, etc.
Join some extracurricular club or cultural organization and get their endorsement. College sophomore Zac Byer, who won election to the 2007-2008 UA, received an endorsement from the Penn College Republicans. In a phone interview, he emphasized soliciting “support and endorsements from the organizations [you are] involved in on campus.” He interviewed on Penn College Republican’s UTV show, The Penn Red and asked his fraternity brothers for campaign help.
9) Form a campaign team. Find someone who can be a campaign manager and energize friends to distribute flyers and signs. Wharton sophomore Arthur Gardner Smith, who won the office of class president my freshman and sophomore years, received support from a team “made up of floormates, members of [the Black Student League] and people [he] met at Wharton Club events.”
10) Use technology to your advantage. Make YouTube videos (more noticed than the UA’s.) Create a campaign website. Use Facebook to promote both. That’s less annoying than the undistinguishable “Vote [insert your name here] for Class President” group.
Many of the people running for the Freshman Class Board and Undergraduate Assembly were class officers in their high school student government so strategy is now an element of the campaign. And you must run it like a real campaign to win.
CommenTATE appears every Monday and Friday
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