Seven years ago, on a Thursday night, two crowds of students gathered on opposite sides of Kerckhoff steps to hear the results of the Undergraduate Students Association Council election.
As 2005 Election Board Chair Nathan Lam read off the results, the crowds erupted, one cheering each time Student Power! (currently known as Students First!) won a seat, and the other bursting into applause for the one-month-old slate that branded itself “Bruins United.”
Today, almost three-quarters of a decade later, Bruins United is guaranteed at least seven seats on the 13-member council.
However, this very guarantee represents a crisis of viability for the seven-year-old slate; this crisis is precisely why Bruins United needs independent challengers to create a sense of accountability.
An independent running for Financial Supports Commissioner, Taylor Bazley, is challenging Bruins United candidate Sahil Seth in one of three contested races, all of which feature a Bruins United candidate.
A Bruins United sweep would put the slate in the same position as Students First! prior to the appearance of Bruins United in 2005: firmly entrenched on the council with viable challengers few and far between. At the time, Students First! was sitting on a 10-year majority and blatantly favored the student groups that supported them, said Andy Green, Bruins United co-founder.
“It’s dangerous the moment that student government becomes an enterprise,” Green said.
Without any viable dissenters, USAC ceases to be a real democracy and starts looking an awful lot like an interest group, which is precisely the reason why an independent like Bazley would serve Bruins United well in the role of council watchdog.
“I don’t have to make Bruins United look good. I don’t have to make Students First! look good. I don’t have to make anyone else look good,” Bazley said. “I can really tell the student body, “˜this person is not doing their job.'”
Bazley’s point played out historically in the 2000-2001 election cycle, when independent presidential candidate Elizabeth Houston narrowly won a spot on a council dominated by Students First! Houston was able to bring transparency to the council, posing a challenge to a Students First! government that had become set in its ways.
On the other hand, Seth said he believes this type of accountability and transparency can come from within the Bruins United slate.
“If we’re looking to represent all students, then I think a 10-person BU slate is incredibly viable,” Seth said. “This means that organizations that typically went to SF! council members to voice their concerns on the council table will be forced to come to BU, and I think that will make party politics nonexistent.”
Yet it seems unlikely that real, effective criticism will arise within a solitary party. Look at Capitol Hill: to find a Republican attacking a Republican or a Democrat admonishing a Democrat is a rare thing.
None of this political rumination should serve to endorse or indict Bazley or Seth for the financial supports commission. Choosing a candidate is very different from choosing a council, and that distinction is an important one.
Indeed, choosing a candidate is a complex formula involving many different variables such as experience, institutional knowledge and platform viability. Each student has to arrive at a candidate independently, based on his or her own formula.
The point, rather, is that a 10-person Bruins United slate with no viable challengers is potentially damaging for Bruins United itself. A one-party government is hard to take seriously.
In order for next year’s council to function in a manner that is honest and democratic, it needs a credible dissenter.
A discerning reader might notice that Lana Habib El-Farra and Taylor Mason have gone as-of-yet unmentioned. Though both are independents running against a Bruins United candidate, they are each previously affiliated with Students First!, which would make their criticisms of Bruins United seem politically motivated. True independents such as Bazley have no such slate bias, and are therefore able to put the student body’s best interests above all else.
The Bruins United slate seems to be undergoing something of a political renaissance.
But, if Bruins United is to avoid a crisis of legitimacy, the slate has some serious soul-searching to do on the nature of democracy at this university.
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