Today marks the (hopeful) finale of maybe the most dramatic student body president race in UNC’s history. From the early disqualifications to the appeals to the violation complaints, this race will remain a blemish on student governance on this campus for a while. Before the end of March we expect to have a whole new cast of characters in the high-level offices of student government, but will anything actually change?
By casting a vote in today’s election, you are placing your confidence in the system we currently have. Every completed ballot is a sign of confidence and care about student governance at UNC — and ideally, we would have no reservations about telling you to exercise your right to vote.
We want to be clear — you should still vote in this election, but let’s make our current situation the benchmark of whether we should continue supporting this system and the legacy of inaction that is plaguing our current form of governance.
The moment we see a new student body president, we hope to see people lobbying our new leader to reject the model of leadership that they are inheriting. From the very first day in the office, there will be the question of who the SBP serves. If our new elected and appointed leaders act in a way that indicates their priority is anything other than the student body, then we have concrete information that we need to radically rework our current system of student governance.
Our board maintains genuine hope that the new SBP, whoever he or she is, seeks the best and brightest talent from all the other campaigns; we implore them to invite applicants from these teams and from campus as a whole. While we recognize that some of the issues with our student governance are systemic, we also have faith that it can rebuild. The best way to do this, we think, is to bury the hatchet from this election and put in a good-faith effort to break down the loyalties from campaign season and create a student government that represents its students.
We encourage whoever is elected to please speak boldly and candidly with the students as often as possible. We will criticize you for what you say if we take issue with it, but we’d rather criticize a real statement than criticize you for saying nothing.
This editorial may come off as pessimistic, but we are sincerely worried about the future of student voice on campus. We as a community must rally together and fight for our right to organize and govern as students.
