So What?

Taking on the big issues, such as essay feedback and bus queues…

election LGOS students university of liverpool vote

Students this week will have found themselves watching The Guild’s new ‘So Stand’ campaign – no doubt with bated breath. Just in case you’ve not yet been fortunate enough to lay eyes on the six, yes six, videos, which discuss such pressing issues as essay feedback and bus queues, here’s a link.

We’ve had enough leaflets going round campus to give the UOL an eco footprint to rival Jeremy Clarkson’s in a desperate attempt to improve turnout, and if you were one of the poor bastards giving out the leaflets, I feel for you. Your hard work probably went down like a fart in a lift.

That’s because when you’re targeting students, earnest and honest campaigns will only ever get sneered at. But I still find it slightly depressing that candidates have to resort to giving out Haribo Tangfastics instead of telling us anything as insignificant as oh, I don’t know, who they are and what the fuck they plan to do when they get in.

Now I enjoy a Tangfastic as much as the next girl, but don’t we have a moral obligation as students to be spearheading a misguided but well-meaning campaign to save the pandas or something along those lines? It depresses me that no one, including me, is able to get excited about student politics.

Now there’s no point me trying to persuade you that the president will have huge amounts of power. It’s partly for this reason that pretty much no one votes. The best we’ve done so far is…wait for it…26%. I know. Impressive. But the main reason the vast majority of us don’t bother voting is much simpler than that. It’s so that if we find next year that our uni is being run by a bunch of self-righteous gap yah twats with a mandate even Kim Jong Un would sneer at, we can say it was nothing to do with us.

Any excuse to use that video…sorry.

As if this wasn’t enough, I think we suspect that many candidates are running not for the good of their fellow students, but for the good of their own CV. They want to be able to say they’ve got ‘leadership skills’ or something equally sickening when in a few years time they’re interviewing for branch manager at Natwest Leamington Spa.

Admittedly, the Guild Elections aren’t exactly life-changing. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter at least a bit. So let’s not elect someone with all the charisma and backbone of a mollusc. I’d like a president who has a genuine concern for students – not just for their own CV. And if they want to bribe me with some E numbers in the process well that’s fine by me, just as long as you tell me about your policies first.

 

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