What You Missed at the Student Government Election Debates

An opinionated look at what the candidates had to say—and how they delivered their messageby Louis OprisaCity College will have to wait until the second week of May to find out the official results for the Student Government Elections that recently took place. Candidates held debates in the NAC rotunda on April 19^th and April 24^th, and discussed what they would do as leaders of the student body. Or at least they tried to.To be fair, the space they were given is an area where most students simply pass by on their way to class. People who stay there are usually working on their computers while sitting on couches and chairs. Furthermore, these debates did not follow the traditional format of a debate for public office that we are used to seeing, such as a presidential debate. Rather, the moderator gave the microphone to whoever’s turn it was to speak (or whoever grabbed the microphone first), and that person spoke talked about how their party would be better than the others. It sounded like more of an advertisement than a debate.Some excerpts from a couple of the various parties:Students Run City: “So basically we don’t aim for perfection, but we work hard as much as we can. City College, please come out and vote for Students Run City team. We want your vote, so come stand up with us. City College, it’s our turn to run City. “We Rep City: “I just wanted to tell you a little bit about our campaign and what it is we’re trying to do at CCNY. Um, I’m pretty sure that all of you have a lot of majors, and each one of you would have never met had you, like, decided to run on the same slate, so, this is where our mission comes into place: We already know that  City College is a diverse campus, I mean look around you, look around you. You probably have more friends that are not your culture than your culture…So what we’re trying to do is integrate City College into a campus that’s not just culturally aware of everything, but academically aware. So when we fight for tuition increases and not increasing tuition, or for like… the library extending hours, we don’t fight for it because we’re Sophie kids, we don’t fight for it cause we’re engineering kids, we fight for it for City College. “Leaders of Tomorrow: “Hello everybody, my name is Rochelle, I am running for University of Student Affairs. Basically, Leaders of Tomorrow, please vote for us, basically we stand for, um, academics and making a stronger impact on campus by leading and representing all of us, and because we are leaders we want to help with extending gym hours, help with student athletes, uniforms. We want to help with the library, basically, we wanna help communication between students and student government, and, that’s it basically. So vote Leaders for Tomorrow, April 24^th, 25^th,and 26^th.”It is worth noting that on voting days, members of each party patrolled the NAC rotunda with iPads in hand, asking students if they had voted. If a student said no, the party member would put their iPad into the students hand and implore them to vote (as encouragingly as possible, of course). Students who have had this happen to them have reported that every nomination text field was already filled out, in favor of the party who was ‘encouraging’ students to vote.Representatives from Apple might want to take note of how they could further market an iPad in this manner.