The original version of this article contained information that was unclear and has been changed. See the bottom of the article for additional information.
Last Tuesday’s undergraduate student government meeting had all the trappings of a workday at the United States Congress: circular discussions, dead-end lines of questioning and zero progress on the issue at hand.
That issue was the ratification of this year’s election calendar, a simple task that should be immune to petty political arguments. But as with several other points of contention this academic year, slate politics determined the course of the conversation and crowded out productive dialogue.
The problem seems rather inconsequential on the surface: this year’s Election Board chose to open voting on Tuesday of elections week rather than Monday.
That small change has bred a great deal of bitterness, with several councilmembers speaking out vehemently against it and others quietly defending it. At the same time, Election Board Chair Anthony Padilla was rather bewildered and unable to answer questions about his choice to change the calendar.
Why all the ruckus about a small delay in the start of voting?
Greek organizations hold house-wide meetings on Mondays. If fraternities and sororities are going to encourage their members to block vote for candidates, Monday nights offer a prime opportunity.
The Greek system has also aligned themselves consistently with Bruins United candidates. In last year’s election, every Interfraternity Council and National Pan-Hellenic Council house that officially endorsed candidates chose Bruins United candidates for every contested position.
And in a decisive split that did not go unnoticed at the meeting, every councilmember that ran with Bruins United last year voted against the Tuesday-Friday calendar, while those that ran with LET’S ACT! wanted to approve it.
Neither side of the debate at that meeting looked good. Both were clearly being influenced by petty slate affiliations, when those ties mean nothing for them next year. Several councilmembers are graduating and the only councilmember running in this year’s elections, General Representative Sunny Singh, abstained from the vote on the calendar. Even with nothing at stake for them, councilmembers stuck to their guns and made the conversation with Padilla painstakingly slow and unproductive.
Padilla, for his part, has been unable to produce any convincing reason for changing the calendar. He has, in fact, consistently denied that the change has anything to do with Greek life, saying instead that he wants to give the student body an extra day to think about their choices.
That strange justification has failed to convince me and many other people, but I don’t think that Padilla was wrong to change the calendar – Greek life is, after all, often accused of block voting. I just wonder why we can’t call a spade a spade.
Slate politics has been the quiet force incapacitating this council from the very beginning; everybody knows it’s happening, but they refuse to speak plainly about it. As we come up on election week, I can think of nothing better to do about slate politics than to speak plainly about them.
Campaigns often breed bad blood between slates and candidates that continues to exist throughout their terms in office.
If we want next year to be different from this one, characterized by cooperation and progress instead of petty politicking, it begins before anyone takes office, before voting even opens.
Once they’re in office, candidates stop being candidates and become councilmembers. After the pettiness and division of the past year, next year’s student government officers would do well to remember that.
Correction: The original version of this article implied that there was evidence of block voting in the Greek system.
