Recently, the Young Democrats decided not to endorse any of the candidates for Student Body President. I am a Democrat, and I like the Young Democrats, but their action is reflective of a wider apathy.
There is a campus-wide lack of faith in all three of the candidates running. They seem pretty boring with boring platform points, and, compared to the group from last year, it’s all, well, kind of boring.
Whether that’s true is beside the point. The wispy ideal for which Young Democrats decided to withhold the endorsement (and which is apparently lacking on all candidates’ platforms) isn’t going to be the entity that gets elected.
Something most people don’t understand about the SBP elections is that the platform is not the central thing. It’s great for providing talking points during the election, but the average college junior doesn’t have a good understanding of the limits of the position, so most platforms are going to be fluffy and infeasible. This is not in itself wrong, and it doesn’t reflect a deeper issue; it’s just the way things go.
Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m not voting for anyone without a well-written platform and solid ideas, but a well-written platform is only useful to the extent that it reflects the competence of the candidate.
So, if not the platform, then what use is the SBP?
The SBP is the key to student-administrator relations. At any given meeting with the Board of Trustees or the Chancellor or who-knows-how-many committees, there’s one chair labeled “Reserved for So-and-so.” There may be other students at these things, going in and out, but So-and-so’s chair is there pretty consistently. We get to choose who So-and-so is. And So-and-so is going to be dealing with the Board of Governors on tuition and cuts or whatever issues currently plague UNC, whether or not it was emphasized or mentioned in his or her platform.
Now, So-and-so can do a lot of things with that chair. At her memorial service, one member of the Board of Trustees recounted how Eve Carson charmed them into listening to over an hour of student testimonials, which discouraged them from voting to raise tuition that year. That’s a good use of that chair.
And the chair has to be occupied by someone. If junior-year activists and progressives on campus fail to muster a candidate that they can wholeheartedly back, then they should choose the best choice available. The position has to be filled, and it has some real importance. In the future, they must work to present an option that they can support.
