OUR VIEW: ASUSU elections are out of control

‘Tis the time of the year when students that don’t have an effective stiff arm or a debilitating scissor kick will inevitably get snowed under by a flurry of multi-colored ASUSU candidate propaganda.

‘Tis the season of shameless copyright infringement. “What can Brown do for you?” The BMW logo. There are more to come.

‘Tis also the season of empty promises and cheap bribery in the form of Pita-Pit coupons.

And we wouldn’t miss the spectacle for the world, and neither should you.

If you’re a little slow on the uptake, ASUSU election season is upon us again – at least they waited for Valentine’s Day to pass first. It’s the time when people motivated enough – or crazy enough – miss about 50 class periods to try to convince you they’re the most suitable candidate to play duck, duck, goose around the big wooden table on the third floor of the TSC. At least that’s what we assume goes on up there. It’s hard to get a good read on the situation when they don’t want to let anyone in.

Whatever they do – Tier II tuition appropriations (or misappropriations), True Aggie Night, etc. – we’ve been told it’s important.

And it’s because of these important tasks – especially Tier II tuition, which is where students can feel like they’re getting some of their money’s worth – we feel like elections should be taken seriously, by candidates and voters alike.

This sounds a lot like the “Get out and vote, rah rah rah” stuff that makes people puke, but after some of the recent events involving ASUSU, we’re begging this time. No cheerleading for the seemingly unimportant university student government democratic process will be found here. If you don’t want to vote, then that’s your prerogative, we’re not going to be motherly and pester you about it. But we will give you reasons to vote.

First, as a student body, we need to hold ASUSU accountable for the sketchy stuff they try to do. Trying to keep their constituency out of their meetings isn’t American. Those tactics would fly in Tehran or Stalin-era Moscow, but not at USU. What’s ironic is how OUR president, Peter McChesney, said in his ASUSU view on Monday that we’re all a part of ASUSU. So does that mean we can all come to those meetings whether they’re closed or not?

And lest we forget how ASUSU officers are giving themselves, what amounts to, a raise – around 15 grand. For doing what?

Second, we need to make sure ASUSU is actually going to do something, especially if it’s costing us $15,000 that could be spent about 15,000 different, possibly more, productive ways. We’d bet that a large majority of students couldn’t recall one thing their student government has done to benefit or enrich their time here at USU. We have blank stares in our office when we try to come up with a list. The only thing ASUSU has tried to do for “The Statesman” recently is move our office. Thanks.

We all need to do the best job we can to try to find people who are actually going to do something. That might be impossible. You just never know if the allure of those couches on the fourth floor will be too much to overcome, turning ambitions of progress and improvement into endless napping and some drooling.

Last, we should vote for candidates who are going to serve us, as USU students, and not themselves. Being the student body president or an executive officer at a university probably looks good on a graduate school or law school application, but if that’s the reason the candidate is doing it, then they ought to be shacked in the middle of the Quad and have rotting fruit thrown at them. We don’t need self-serving, self-important dweebs populating the third floor of the TSC. It does the student body no good to vote for someone who’s only in it for the title.

And if you still think it’s all just a big popularity contest with no real importance to you, the average USU student, that sort of thinking would get a lot of gestures of acceptance in the halls of Old Main, the library or the HUB.

But if it is all a popularity contest, then maybe we should make it a little more entertaining. Maybe pick the president using the Festivus method – a series of increasingly difficult feats of strength. We could pick the other officers by tug-o-wars, spelling bees or ’80s-style break-dance battles.

Until they let the “Statesman” staff run the elections – which will never happen – we’re stuck with old-fashion voting.