It was interesting to hear someone speak of the “sheer audacity of political student advertising these days.” What about the sheer lack of support from students? It’s ridiculous when students are accused of littering and resume building when they put such hard work into the fliers, banners, and other such advertising in an effort to get the attention of their fellow students. The candidates are also required to take down all material after elections or they get fined, so they aren’t littering. The only ones littering are the pranksters who rip down, or modify the arrangement of fliers. It is very interesting to note that every flier and banner has an e-mail contact, yet people in general have neither sent in e-mails complaining, nor sent in e-mails supporting (I went and asked some of the candidates).
When I arrived back from spring break, I was in a depressed funk. I imagine this was the case for a good portion of students. Now imagine being able to return and start campaigning with such energy and vigor as the current candidates. It brought to mind how much these students must care about RPI and student government. The simple fact is that some people react negatively to change. When more and more students get active in student government, some people are going to complain especially if they are “oldsters” that have been here for 3-4 years.
I never saw any Banana Party candidates bothering anyone in the Commons. As a matter of fact, campaigning in the Commons isn’t allowed. Anyone who did was breaking the rules. All the candidates are bound by certain rules they must follow so trying to say something like “there’s simply no restraint, whatsoever,” is a rather ignorant statement. Candidates cannot affix any campaign material to dorm windows except if the room’s occupant allows said candidate to hang something out the window. Candidates are not allowed to use duct tape, except on brick. Candidates are supposed to get permission from the building coordinator before placing something on a academic campus building. Any building used for voting cannot have any campaign material on it the day of the voting. Also, the reason for the fliers spelling out “Genesis” and/or “Banana” is that candidates are not allowed to campaign personally for a certain period of time. They are only allowed to tell you to vote on the fliers but every flier has contact information on it. Hence the reason that e-mail is not extensively used.
Freedom of speech is very important. There were signs up saying “We don’t waste paper reminding you to vote,” which was an obvious complaint against the amount of paper being used. Well, here is another rule: There is a set amount of money each candidate is allowed to spend on the campaign, so instead of wasting paper complaining about something like that, why not go and ask the RNE to reduce the amount of money each person is allowed to spend on their campaign?
Lastly, all the rules and regulation can easily be found on http://elections.union.rpi.edu/, the RNE website. You can also find what parties and candidates are out there and what they stand for. Again, the ignorance some people will speak from is outstanding. If for three years you’ve watched something happen and done nothing except write one article to whine about it then you need to stop being a dorm rat, go outside, and start doing actual work to get your viewpoint across. Here’s hoping people get more motivated, and that people think before they complain.
Charles Otlowski
CSCI ’07
