Union elections – a chance for change or a popularity contest?

I’m going to be completely honest here-I know absolutely nothing about the Union Elections. Not a clue. The plethora of posters, banners and flyers that have sprung up, daffodil like, around the square over the past few days have done nothing except cause minor difficulty when I’ve been eating my lunch. I haven’t so much as read them as used them as place mats. But what I am aware of, very clearly, is that a few of my friends are running.

You have to hand it to campaigners, randomly chatting to complete strangers and asking them to trust that they would make the best “Welfare, Community and Diversity officer” can’t be easy. I for one could never muster up that sort of courage, I guess that’s what makes a good officer. But, come Thursday are students going to vote for the person whose poster they’ve seen once or twice in the square? Or the person they sit next to in seminars and pre-drink with before a Tuesday night LCR? Sadly, I think the latter is more likely.

Before I cause an uprising, I’m not suggesting that supporting a friend, and potential officer, is a bad thing. It’s human nature for us to want our friends to succeed. But it’s concerning that the only faces of campaigners I can muster in my mind are the one’s I have previously met. The only manifesto I have heard so far is from someone I work with. A quick whip round of the Sainsbury centre study area showed that the majority of voters would place their trust in friends, rather than on the promises made by strangers. The few people who said they would vote for someone based on their manifesto only did so as a result of not knowing anyone who’s running. It would seem that, in terms of our future Union representatives, it’s a lot more about who you are, rather than what you can, and promise to do.

So does this mean, come Thursday, that I am more likely to vote for a friend than a campaign promise? In this instance, probably yes. As superficial and high school like as it all sounds, if I know your face I’m more likely to vote for you. That or I’ll just say screw it and vote for the person with the best hair.

Elections 2014 Look at those beautiful faces