Last weekend, the Times New Roman staff rallied up a group of their staff and student leaders to play hide and seek in the Curry Student Center. I wonder if the Student Government Association (SGA)’s presidential candidates are still hiding.
The SGA Joint Senate nominated Senators Chris Bourne and Joey Fiore for president March 12. Aside from some Facebook activity and an attempt by Bourne at a student forum that unfortunately fell victim to Friday’s snow storm, our candidates haven’t seriously started to campaign, already a week into the period.
The Rules Committee revised the Direct Elections manual in the middle of the fall semester to extend the candidates’ campaign period from two to four weeks. We thought four weeks would allow the candidates ample time to reach out to the student body and get students seriously interested in the election. While the Administration, Public Relations and Rules Committees are charged with promoting the election as a whole, we figured students would get more excited about voting for a particular candidate than simply voting in the election as a whole.
I wholeheartedly understand the pressures of running a campus-wide campaign. I experienced the near-panic attack of having only 12 hours to complete a candidate’s biography, and I can only imagine the stress the candidates must be feeling already a week into the campaign. I withdrew from the race under these pressures, among other reasons, because I did not believe I could run a far-reaching campaign while tending to the responsibilities of my elected position of vice president for administration and public relations. I’m left hoping, however, that our candidates will hype things up during the two and a half weeks left before voting ends.
Students, the countdown is over. Please go and find your candidates for student body president. Message them on facebook or contact them through their websites, bournetolead.com or joeyfiore.com. Ask them to speak in your residence hall lobby or to a group of your friends. Show an interest in them and most importantly go to the myNEU portal April 1 to vote in the Northeastern University Direct Elections (NUDE). And, candidates, please, come out and play.
– Krystal Beaulieu is a middler political science and journalism major and SGA vice president for administration and public relations.
