Beckstreet’s Beck (Alright!)

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Walking down Locust Walk, I couldn’t help but notice all the election signs. “Vote for Jeff Kaplan!” said one. Simple, direct, commanding. Everything you could want in a leader.

Should you vote for Jeff? I have no idea. Should you vote at all? I really don’t care, and that’s what separates me from a lot of people who think voter participation is really important in student elections.

Last year, the Nominations and Elections Committee offered free pizza to get students to participate in elections. Pretty soon they’ll start their annual campaign of knocking on freshmen’s doors and asking them if they’ve voted yet.

“You need to vote, it’s really important!” they’ll say.

“But I don’t know the people running, or even what they stand for.”

“Don’t worry, you can read all about their platforms online!”

And you absolutely can read about them; however, they’re not helpful. Half of them are just jokes, and not even funny ones.

Our buddy Jeff Kaplan (with whom you can “make it happen”) claims to “support magicians and ventriloquists.” Oh, good thing I paused my game of Mario Kart to participate in this silly election - the plight of magicians and ventriloquists needed my vote. Candidate for Class Board President Lauren Albert wrote her platform as a parody of Fergie’s Fergilicious. I don’t really have anything to say about that, I just feel it’s important this doesn’t go unnoticed.

Some candidates do actually list issues that they’re concerned about - lowering text book prices, better food in the dining hall, and my favorite: quality toilet paper. That’s all well and good, but I’d like to hope that if the UA and Class Board had any power over these things, they’d already be fixed.

It’s not like any of their opponents are for raising the price of textbooks, like The Penguin Publishing Company bought them out.

I’d love to moderate a debate where a candidate was arguing against bringing in two ply toilet paper.

Candidate 1: “I say, it’s about time this school got real toilet paper!”
Moderator: “And your rebuttal, Mr. Anderson?”
Candidate 2: “You’ll all get one ply and you’ll like it!”

I’m not trying to negate all the work the UA and Class Board does. I’m sure it takes a lot of effort and I’m glad I’m not responsible for it. I just believe that nearly anyone who runs for such a position will be qualified enough to fulfill its duties.

Who you elect will not make much of a difference since none of them actually have the power to do any of the stuff they want to do. Now watch me be wrong and somehow one of these kids gets us involved in a war with Iraq.

Beckstreet’s Beck (Alright!) appears every Tuesday and Thursday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 7:08 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.