Though the Free Press editorial board traditionally endorses candidates for the Union executive board as a matter of habit each spring, this time we spent a long time debating whether to pick a side at all. Neither of the two competing slates is perfect, but the promise each holds far outshines its shortcomings. It has almost become an article of faith — or lack thereof — that the Union government should be petty, ineffective or just plain lazy after two consecutive years of empty promises. This new batch of candidates must destroy this perception, because if it continues for much longer, the Union will become an intractable joke.
Because the stakes are so high, our own e-board was not content to play armchair quarterback to both sides from the sidelines. True, Matt Seidel seems distressingly uninformed about procedure next to John Dallas Grant’s extensive Union experience. Yet Grant’s promises for progress fall flat next to his track record as vice president for a bickering and idle Union this year. Despite his sometimes naive proposals, Seidel’s ardent leadership style holds more promise of steering the Union back to effectiveness. We enthusiastically endorse him for Union president.
This past year, the Student Union under President Adil Yunis has promised the world and delivered only legislative purgatory. For all the talk of bicycle racks and alcohol amnesty policies, the student group made very few changes to undergraduate life this year. Proposals foundered in committees for months and e-board members bickered. All the while, the administration told students to trust it as it raised tuition without revealing where the money is going. Most controversial proposals died from administration stonewalling, if they ever reached university authorities at all.
As president, Yunis was ultimately responsible for leading a complex Student Union and failed to deliver. Yet as vice president, Grant was responsible for keeping the Union arguments from hindering progress. Many cabinet and committee leaders have said they are disappointed with the Union’s lack of direction. One of Grant’s key proposals includes Union team building, but if he could not accomplish this in a year, chances are slim he will do better as president.
As a challenger, Seidel ultimately focuses on issues that matter more to students. His key agenda, improving academic advising, addresses an extremely important problem with understaffed and uninspired advising offices that frequently anger undergraduates. He has challenged administration officials as chairman of the Academic Affairs Committee, a welcome departure from the present Union’s cozy relationship with the university. As much as it may alienate university staffers, the Union president must always choose the students he represents over the administration, which has enough of an advantage on its own.
Grant’s experience also has its advantages, however, and if Seidel wants to lead Boston University’s undergraduates, he will have to learn more about the environmental and budgetary issues he has stressed in his campaign. The Union needs more funding, not less, and it must use its money to back up its demands. Grant understands that the administration will not be bothered with demands like putting up more emergency blue light boxes for security unless the Union funds these initiatives out-of-pocket. Next on any president’s agenda should be reinstating Escort Security Service vans, with or without the administration’s financial support.
Yet both presidential candidates are running alongside very young slates. Their lack of experience could pose problems for them in the coming year without an active president leading them. Many have started to climb the Union ladder through various committees and constituencies in the General Assembly, and Team Union boasts social connections with large and active campus organizations, which are vital to keeping the student body at large concerned with the Union’s progress.
Still, both slates could have spent more time cutting their teeth on the Union’s mind-numbing bureaucracy going into this election. These fresh faces could become lost in the circular committee legislation process or provide welcome changes to business as usual in the Union. It all depends on who leads them. If voters mix candidates from different slates, however, they can expect the same outcome last year’s election produced — a lackluster leader who struggled to work with an executive board he never ran with in the first place.
By her own admission, independent presidential candidate Jeanne Mansfield entered the race considering it a joke. The problem with this approach — or advantage, if you agree, as we are inclined to, with her point of view — is that many students don’t get it. Mansfield said she and her campaign plan to stage eye-catching dance routines and other skits throughout the week to advertise the importance of the Union elections. When Mansfield showed up to a campaign event dressed in a Clifford the Big Red Dog costume, she understandably stole the limelight from her opponents wearing such uptight outfits slacks and ties.
Mansfield should and will attract normal BU students, who haven’t been given good reasons to take an interest in their campus government, to notice the elections this week. She also provides a refreshing perspective to both her opponents, who have understandably lost touch with students who don’t follow Union politics. More importantly, she promises to keep any of these college politicos from taking themselves too seriously. We hope she will continue to challenge the Union mentality next year.
Still, Mansfield will probably not win except “by some fluke chance,” to use her words. A vote for her will not help tackle problems with academic advising, tuition transparency and a lack of environmental conservation on campus. What she can do is pique students interest enough to care about these topics, and vote according to their conscience rather than out of ignorance.