It’s the last day to vote in one of the wildest UChicago Council elections yet

For those of you who do not have the pleasure of being a member of the class of 2020 Facebook page and have therefore not been inundated with notifications about the college council elections let me tell you it has been a rollercoaster – but it ends today.

The class of 2020 college council election mayhem started on the 6th of October when a total of 19 students registered to run for college council. Although this number gives each candidate a 21% chance of securing one of the four places on college council it also made this year’s campaign one of the most competitive elections in recent years. The craziness of the first day continued when chalk posts for one candidate were defaced with implications that they supported trump.

Then by the 9th of October candidate’s chances increased to 22% when a candidate was removed from the ballot. Andrew Harrington had chosen to skip the mandatory meeting for candidates on the 7th October in protest of the student government and was therefore removed as a candidate in the election. This was just the start of what was to be a week of chaos, campaigning and a lot of sarcastic Facebook posts.

By 3pm on October 9th, the candidate’s statements were published on the student government site and things began to get interesting as many facebook pages for each candidate were established and shared online. Whilst many candidates were campaigning about the real issues on campus such as Saturday night dining options and mental health support services, some of the candidates clearly showed they wanted to have a little fun on the campaign trail. Candidates statements included promises such as a new L line through campus and curtains on Mansueto to save energy.

Actually, these promises came from just one candidate in the election; Anitej Ramesh who set in motion the next big event of this college election when he posted this:

For those of you who are unaware of what he is referring to, on October 11th The Chicago Maroon published the results of a survey with the candidates in which 8 candidates agreed that they would divest from countries that violate human rights violations. Although this may not shock a lot of people, the class of 2020 may be unaware of the protests which took place spring quarter when the college council voted on divesting from Israel. This vote called into question what college council should be concerned with and also accumulated in a college council meeting attended by Dean Boyer in which the room was clearly divided with students for and against the issue. Although this event took place nearly four months before the class of 2020 would arrive on campus it became a hot topic for the election with many candidates also showing their support or opposition to divestment.

However, this was not the end.  The facebook posts became increasingly odder. Although some candidates continued to focus on their viewpoints. Others decided to move away from the traditional campaign posts.

The traditional campaign post.

The new and improved way to win votes.

You may be asking yourself but do these facebook posts work? They definitely did for one candidate who currently has 1,243 likes on his facebook page, which is even more astounding when we consider the class of 2020 only has 1600 students.

Facebook wasn’t the only tool being used to promote candidates. Sat Gupta (another candidate) created a Snapchat geo filter for his campaign , which3 caused controversy in 2019 when a candidate was accused of spending more than the allocated campaign budget.

Then to top of what has surely been one of the craziest elections in UChicago college history this happened when voting opened yesterday:

WHEN WILL THE CHAOS END?

Hopefully at 4:30pm today when voting closes. Winners are set to be announced at 5pm and then we can all finally get back to the real election which is set to be just as wild as this one.