Elections 2012 post-mortem

“To get to the end is a void; you don’t know what to do.”

Okay, so I know that isn’t strictly apropos to the end of the student election campaigns, but Mark Beaumont, the guy from Perthshire who cycled around the world, was in town last week and I really enjoyed that line from his talk. So I decided to steal it.

In the aftermath of the Student’s Union elections nobody really wants a post-mortem. But for me, election week was instructive in a number of ways.

I didn’t campaign for anything, or even for anyone in particular. Insofar as I was engaged in the election process, it was only to promote the elections themselves within the medical school. Which isn’t really a great or impressive contribution to anything. But I did go to the Sabs debates, and I spent a fair part of my week wandering around the streets talking to people about their campaigns. And I had quite a pleasant time.

I had mixed feelings about a lot of the candidates. Though most people seemed to be running for good reasons and with good intentions, a fair number of candidates didn’t seem to have much to say. Often there was little more than a string of unsubstantiated buzzwords: Accountability, Communication, Transparency. There was a lot of vacuousness.

But there was also, thank goodness, some tremendous ability on show. Most of the successful candidates seem to be capable of working together to fight for us and to help make our university and town even better.

I find that extremely encouraging. Since we live in a town where there is essentially sack-all to do, we have to make our own fun. If we want things to happen, we have to make them happen ourselves. In many ways, I think that is an incredibly valuable aspect of my time at university. And I’m so glad that most of the new Sabbaticals seem to share that perspective.

Further, election week made me think about the value and importance of the student experience itself. Though academic enrichment, an expanded understanding of the world and, of course, increased and diversified social interaction are the most commonly extolled virtues of the experience, I can think of a somewhat-hard-to-articulate fourth. University provides an opportunity to build capacity. By which I mean learning how to actually do stuff. And much though St Andrews is ridiculous and absurd and in no way reflects the common life of the Fife population, some of the processes which go on here do actually reflect how certain elements of the real world function.

This capacity-building is useful. Not just in the tedious CV-related sense but in its application. It has utility in the very real world in which we live; it figures in the actual ping-pong of the abyss! It is useful because whatever storms may be coming to us all, if we were engaged and thinking productively while we were young then we may acquire an aptitude for challenge. And this may help imbue us with the sense of peace that comes with the knowledge that, even if we fail, we will at least have learned how to try our best.

In this way St Andrews presents an ideal opportunity for students to build up political acumen.

People here are smart enough to be persuaded by argument rather than sentiment. So if you are engaging enough as a candidate you can get people on board.

But even the force of St Andrews’ political and media machines, tied together by all the tatty cloth, duct tape and Taste coffee that campaign budgets would allow, could not get everyone out to Rock the Vote.

A common excuse among non-voters seems to have been: ‘I didn’t have time; I had work, I had class tests, I had stuff to do’. And that’s fine, in a way, but it isn’t an attitude which impresses me very much. I mean, I can’t help feeling that the running of our Student’s Association matters more than a sub-honours econ test.

Another argument I’ve heard was ‘I don’t really know what the Sabs do, and I don’t think they have a big effect, so I’m not going to waste my time voting for any of them’.

That argument is both boring and flawed. Most pressingly: if you don’t think the Sabs do anything useful, perhaps it’s because we haven’t been voting for the best people? So stand up. Stand up and run yourself. Go out and find out who can actually do stuff. And then vote for them. Because competent people make things happen. By definition. A competent group of creative Sabs can make the Students Association fantastically good for all of us.

The turnout for this year’s elections was unprecedentedly excellent for student elections in the UK. But the first thought that came to my mind when I heard people cheering about voter turnout of 52% was, well what the hell were the other 3766 people doing?

Partly, what on earth is their problem? But also, why did the candidates not manage to get them on board? Everybody has to do this together: the Stand, Star, the Saint, even the fat guy in the pub. As a student body we can be very proud of last week and what we achieved. But there is so much more to do. We should be more engaged. We should be more engaging. And I think we all have the capacity to do that.

So roll on next year. And good luck to everyone starting out in a new role.