If the Student Union Elections Commission can help it, Boston University students will have fewer and fewer excuses for being uniformed during this spring’s Student Union elections.
The commission announced last week that it will sponsor a special webcast debate on the first night of the Executive Board elections, allowing students to watch from the relative comfort of their dorm rooms.
‘Basically we just want it to be another way to get the word out about elections,’ said SUEC Chairwoman Jeanette Jankiewicz. ‘We’d like to get a larger part of the student body involved in the elections.
‘The student government should represent the majority of the population,’ she said.
The online debate is part of an ongoing campaign by the commission to get more students involved in the election process, both running for office and voting, Jankiewicz said. According to Jankiewicz, SUEC hopes to eclipse the record 3,425 voters that elected this year’s TRUE slate.
And since, unlike the fall Senate elections, the spring E-board contest is held online, Jankiewicz said the commission chose to webcast the debate on the first night of the election in hopes that students will immediately click over the elections page and not forget to vote.
‘We’re not expecting the online webcasting debate to be the main thing to increase voter turnout,’ she said. ‘This will be basically for people who don’t know too much about the elections.’
According to Jankiewicz, the webcast is an ideal opportunity for students studying abroad to see the candidates firsthand before voting and will also serve as a second chance for students on campus who missed earlier debates.
Pitting the presidential candidates of each slate against one another, the web-based debate will be broadcast live from a room in the College of Communication and will supplement the two traditional debates and ‘meet the candidates’ night that the commission sponsors every year, Jankiewicz said.
Jankiewicz said SUEC tried to organize an online debate last spring but ran out of time.
Unlike the two traditional debates, one of which is scheduled for the Tsai Performance Center, Jankiewicz said the webcast will not feature the entire slates and will not be open to students because of space constraints in the COM room that is already outfitted for webcasting.
And although she said the logistics have yet to be worked out, Jankiewicz said SUEC is working on having a computer or telephone in the room with the candidates so students can ask questions and interact with the debaters. According to Jankiewicz, the project is not costing the commission any extra money because the broadcasting equipment is already in place.
Former E-board candidate and current 10 Buick St. Senator Mike Bodek, who took part in last year’s conventional debates, praised the idea because of the likelihood that it will yield more informed voters but said web debates are no substitute for the real thing.
‘I think it’s good and bad in both ways,’ Bodek said. ‘In the good ways, it would get more people to watch because they wouldn’t have to leave their dorm room … In the bad, it takes away from the dynamic of the people speaking.’
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