The latest goss on Guild SO elections
Eight per cent of you had voted mid-week
Want to know the struggles the candidates and their campaign teams have to go through in order to win your votes? Our political guru Benedict Spence has spent the week documenting this soul-crushing tedium.
As we pass the halfway stage of the Guild election campaign it remains tight. At lunchtime today, the top two candidates had the exact number of votes. The latest numbers tell us just 1,749 have voted – eight per cent of you. But it’s still far better than last year, when just 100 people voted on the first day. This time a mighty 438 voted… out of almost 22,000.
We’re all in this together
The starting gun was fired with a disappointing, visible lack of candidates – or gratuitous verbal abuse – on campus. The absence of the latter was deeply missed as it enlivens student politics: the former not so much, as they usually do the opposite. At the traditional breakfast briefing, it transpired the cheapskates at the Guild would no longer be serving bacon sandwiches like they did last year.
The cold grey Monday morning outside the Sydney Jones was illuminated by a solitary purple Grace Edwards T-shirt. It was joined shortly by the greens of Alex Ferguson and Harry Anderson, and the burning orange of the fiery Emma Sims. Unsuspecting students were picked off one by one with “are you voting this week?” or, “can I get you to vote for so and so?”, and the slightly chilling “lollypops, children?”
Fear and loathing on South Campus
Like rabbits in a bear trap, many never stood a chance. Eventually, however, they’ve begun to wise up. Phones come out. Hoods go up. People don’t even bother with “no, thank you”. As of today, no one has been told to “fuck off and die”, but blanking is now the norm. You should also stick about until 4.43pm when the really inventive swearing comes out, or Friday morning, when the vandalism starts.
Rosie O’Donnell has occasionally been seen here, there and everywhere, which is better than Sadiq Haruna, whose cojones are so titanic he hasn’t bothered showing up. There were also reports of a candidate being booed in a lecture shout-out by Medics on Monday, though an alternative explanation for that is the live colonoscopy they’d been due to witness had been cancelled. Medics do get mardy if they don’t get their colonoscopies.
Education, education, education
Outgoing SRO James Coe took the opportunity for a last stroll around his fiefdom, with the air of a man who knew he could punch a horse in the eye and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. Given the low number of votes cast, however, it is fast becoming the job of Guild staff to cajole students into voting, many of whom don’t seem to have a clue what the election is for.
One Emma Sims campaigner has been seen congratulating anyone who has voted at all. Yours truly has taken to standing outside the library, forlornly crying “please, just acknowledge the sign”.
‘If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal’
It’s not all been doom and gloom. Emma Sims has created her own online game, Flappy Sims, for anyone with time on their hands.
An Alex Ferguson campaigner spotted self-proclaimed pick-up artist James Church and tried to get him to “pick her up”. Another girl spent 10 whole minutes trying to convince someone to vote, only to be told he’d voted already, and he just wanted her number. Both campaigners declined to give their names.
So far, so deeply dull. Maybe in the final two days something exciting will happen, like a sex-tape scandal or a candidate going to rehab.