…a facebook ad AND text messages? First off, this is my first wespeak, so take it as an indicator of how ridiculous this situation has become. I think it’s fair to say that many students are unhappy with the approach to campaigning this year. I’m not trying to dismiss the WSA as trivial, but please get some perspective: you are running for a position in a university student assembly, not a state or federal office. There is no need for the negative campaigning. Between this and the overly persistent door-to-door representatives, flyers, ads, and now text messages, I have absolutely no desire to involve myself in this game.
The past two years, I voted based on limited information (it’s difficult to get a picture of how the WSA makes decisions and exercises political power without participating, especially in terms of the role of an individual). Although I at first did not want to vote after receiving your text message, after some time I decided to vote based on my negative experience of this election. I cast my vote based on two criteria: candidates who had been the least obnoxious and the least ego-driven (presenting a bold, aggressive personality). Lowell Wood, I’m not sure if you wrote your message in the soapbox on the election page after the intense campaigning, but congratulations on positioning yourself in response to student sentiment around the campaigning (good emphasis on “we”). Unlike Feiring & Firke, I’m confident that you will better understand the students’ perspectives.
As for what motivated this wespeak, I would like to see a policy that prevents elections from soliciting our votes in these ways. It’s nice to have the student directory, but I consider this an abuse of its purpose, and, other than posters etc. around campus, ads that require a campaign budget of sorts should not be allowed. Either way, you’ve distanced yourself through these techniques, so I hope their inefficacy will be made evident in the voting results.
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