A lot of talk has gone on about whether or not we should remove the prohibition of slates during SFUO election campaigns. I would like to say that I am very much against this kind of move. (at least not without some kind of serious research into the reasoning behind the implementation in the first place)
Here's the deal, we have 30 000+ students at our school, and a handful or two of "Federally" involved students (at the Fed level). Then there is another group of students who I would called "provincially" involved (federated body level). Now there is obviously some overlap, but clearly, there are some students who are involved in one and not the other. I also would contend that sitting on BOA for your faculty is a grey area, just to make everything more complicated. (It's all because of our weird system of having the executive sit on the legislature yet be elected as an executive, thus it is not an Primus inter pares type situation as the Canadian Parliament, but an awkward bastardization of such . . . but on to the business at hand.
What happens if someone new wishes to get elected? And better yet, what if they have new ideas that don't mesh well with the established crew? Well, you would say that slates are not mandatory and they can run independently, but come on, let's be honest, working as a slate gives you such an advantage, not only can you share money and resources (from volunteers to posters) you can mention your entire slate and give and get endorsements from every other member of the slate. If you work alone you get none of that. You also have to pay for everything yourself.
Another question is who would pick the slate members? If you ever want to compare slates to political parties, then you must reconcile the fact that riding associations choose the candidates (mostly) and the conventions choose the leader (again, mostly). Would we have such mechanisms? Or would it just be the leader of the slate determining who will be his/her VP Finance?
If we had a legitimate governance, I would expect this subject to be a first semester referendum next year, in which case I would urge a no vote.
No slates.
Proportional Representation?
ReplyDeleteIf we moved to a Campus Parliamentary system, with the "schools" as ridings and multiple parties and extreme extravagance.
ReplyDeleteBut if you speak of some kind of run-off system, I don't know if we can handle an accurate form. IRV has its issues, but would be the only one we could actually implement, although it would be very complex to the untrained student.
An actual run-off would likely create mass confusion. When the SFUO elections were on, people kept sayign that the elections already happened (they were thinking of the CFS referendum), and now with the Federated body election, people are doign the same thing (but confusing it with the SFUO elections). Imagine if we had a legitimate run-off election between Seamus Wolfe and Renaud Garner; and Ted Horton and Jeremy Stuart? It would be spectacular for the Campus Political Afficionados, but for the average student? They would be totally lost.