ecent campus discussion, including one particularly questionable editorial in The Dartmouth, has disparaged the significance of the Student Assembly and its actions. The editorial, published on April 25, criticized the “pointless” resolutions put forward by the Assembly, and SA’s lack of an institutional voice with respect to the administration.
The tone of The Dartmouth’s criticism is unconscionably pessimistic and harmful to the voice it claims to promote. The Student Assembly, regardless of its current effectiveness, is the only voice with the potential to represent the entire student body. What The Dartmouth’s editorial board fails to realize is that the SA is as legitimate as we choose to make it. It draws its legitimacy from the support of the students, as expressed through the electoral process to choose new officers.
No, the Student Assembly does not adequately represent the student body, and no, it does not play a strong enough role in confronting the administration. But why is that? Perhaps it is because the majority of students do not choose to take the 30 seconds necessary to register their choices. And why do students seem to actively avoid voting? Perhaps because the majority of students see the Student Assembly as The Dartmouth does: irrelevant and illegitimate. The editors of The Free Press feel that in such an environment, what is truly “pointless” is for a student newspaper to whine about the lack of an institutional voice even as it undercuts the only foundation upon which students could potentially build that voice.
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, students will have the opportunity to participate in annual campus-wide elections for a variety of student government positions, the most important of which are Student Body President and Vice President. The editors of The Dartmouth Free Press, without endorsing specific candidates, urge all students to take this election seriously and vote. If Dartmouth students vote in tomorrow’s elections, if eighty or ninety percent just log on to <basement.dartmouth.edu/elections> and punch a few keys, we will have an institutional voice. Yes, the winning candidates will have to work hard to turn an electoral majority into actual power, but we think they will find it much easier if we eliminate the ability of opportunistic reporters to bemoan the illusory mandate of the winners.
As part of our effort to energize this week’s elections, we have asked the candidates for President and Vice President to write short pieces on why their opponents were less qualified than they were to lead the student body. We did not ask this question in order to promote “negative campaigning.” Instead, we wanted the candidates to come out from behind their campaign posters and talk about the differences between themselves and the other candidates. To their credit, many of the candidates were hesitant to participate in something that seemed so negative on the surface, but, also to their credit, they understood the value of this forum to open campus discourse, and their responses are printed below.
Please do not read these pieces as unsubstantiated attacks. They are not. They express the true beliefs of the candidates who wish to represent you. Read them, discuss them, ask the candidates themselves about them, and then react in the only way a responsible adult can—VOTE.
