Opinions

As we approach the elections for junior, senior and Student Union (SU) caucus, we once again find ourselves asking: Why do we do it? Why put up with the in-your-face campaigning, the incessant pleading of the candidates to vote, the election whose validity must every so often be called into question? In theory, we want democracy. We want Stuyvesant High School to embody the cherished principles of a republic. Yet our governing officials win their elections by skin-of-the-teeth pluralities, other candidates’ disqualifications and all-out electoral do-overs.

While most Sub-Saharan dictatorships are more democratic than Stuyvesant, we do make an effort. The Board of Elections (BOE), an appointed body of the SU, is tasked with running a smooth election. However, past elections have shown the BOE’s failure in doing such a task. Case in point: last fall’s freshmen caucus elections. Candidates were disqualified after the votes were cast, forcing the electoral process to re-start later in the semester.

The entire theory of an unbiased organ of oversight in the context of school elections strikes me as preposterous. Members of the BOE are often close friends of election candidates, and charges of bias and election rigging have been made in the past. Perhaps this has more to do with the nature of the BOE as an appointed, rather than elected body (oh, the irony!) and the fierce competition of the elections.

Election rules set by the BOE are often highly impractical and shift the burden of monitoring the election onto the candidates themselves. Candidates are responsible for ensuring none of their posters ends up on the floor—a ludicrously impossible task—and for reporting campaign abuses themselves. Many members of the BOE content themselves with collecting complaints and acting only when pressure from candidates or the administration reaches a breaking point.

More specific rules regarding online campaigning have been implemented this election following the faux pas of the freshmen caucus elections. Some of these rules seem to infringe on privacy rights of the candidates. According to The Stuyvesant High School Board of Elections Official Rules and Regulations, “all candidates and their campaign managers have their Facebook profiles/walls/superwalls, etc. open and available to the Stuyvesant community to access.” Now, I understand the motive behind this: allowing the BOE to check candidates for online campaigning. What fails me, though, is the logic dictating that a person is expected to give up his or her online privacy in order to participate in the electoral process. Democracy is crucial to the wellbeing of Stuy students. But is it more crucial than personal safety?

This brings us to the key aspect of the question of elections—and of the SU itself: why do we take ourselves so seriously? We aren’t running a country, just a school. All we really need is an effective method of getting the bare financial and administrative necessities done. Ultimately, the budgets get made and the dates get set, but our ramshackle electoral process forces us to call into question our entire system of student government and our approach to it.

We’ll never have to deal with a constitutional crisis—though the SU has dedicated entire Executive Committee sessions to preparing for just such a possibility. We’ll never have to put crucial questions of human liberties to popular referendum. We need clubs, dances and SING!. Until the BOE and the SU devise a way to deliver those to us without the drama, anxiety and frustration that comes every year with the elections, we will still have an SU of cliques, pluralities and minimal participation.

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