Opinions

Democracy, like a capitalist market, works best with competition. Fierce competition exposes weaknesses, compounds strength—and provides voters with their best representative. Unfortunately, we have not seen that in this year’s Student Union (SU) election.

There were only two tickets for the primary race, resulting in an unenthusiastic and disappointing initial vote. Junior James Kim for President and sophomore Casey Griffin for Vice President (VP), while experienced, demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm for next year’s SU. Junior Ray Hicks for President and sophomore Sophia Curran for VP declined to be interviewed; their inaction and general attitude reveals their campaign to be little more than a poor joke. The Spectator endorses Kim for President and Griffin for VP because they are the better of the two tickets, not because they are the ideal candidates for the job.

Kim-Griffin’s primary campaign platform was their experience in the SU, an advantage that could hardly have been matched even if the other ticket had been more serious. Kim served as both freshman and sophomore caucus president, and assumed the role of SU VP in his junior year, and has shown commitment to the SU throughout his time at Stuyvesant. Griffin has been similarly committed, serving as both freshman and sophomore caucus VP.

However, their campaign showed a lack of effort, and they hardly campaigned at all. Moreover, their platform promoted a conservative agenda, including promises to improve the SU handbook, increase club participation with more rooms and funds available, and encourage school spirit by hosting “theme days” in the SU. Kim-Griffin failed to explain how they would go about improving the SU handbook. Increasing club funding appears to be a pipe dream when taking into consideration the recent city-wide budget cuts. Increasing the number of “themed days” in the SU is a step in the right direction, following this year’s trend of opening up the SU to students through events, couches and a more open agenda.

In their interview with The Spectator Managing Board, however, Kim and Griffin introduced new ideas that seemed to hold more promise. They proposed forming a Student Leadership Council, which would include major student organizations like ARISTA. The purpose of the Council would be to ensure that Kim-Griffin would be representing the interests of the majority of the students, and not just those of the SU. Kim also acknowledged the damaged relations with the administration that occurred as a result of this year’s problems, and he repeatedly stressed improving communication. He plans to do this by holding face-to-face meetings with the PA and SU rather than just e-mail communication, which is what they did this year, according to Kim. As for communication with the students, Kim-Griffin want to reach out personally by introducing themselves directly to people. To avoid this year’s SU budget crisis, they plan to figure out how much the SU can spend per month beforehand and show Principal Stanley Teitel the SU’s financial situation if he encourages them again to spend. Kim-Griffin also came up with a solution for Stuyvesant’s trend of a low voter turnout, which proposed working more with the BOE and distributing unbiased advertising from the BOE to vote. All these ideas, however, should have been more publicized by vigorous campaigning on the part of Griffin and Kim.

Next year’s President and VP will need to lead the SU under increasingly heavy fire from students and administrators alike. The SU must cooperate with administrators as the representatives of the student body, encourage an apathetic student body to participate and at the same time, demonstrate their worth to this apathetic constituency—not an easy task. It is, however, their job.

It is unfortunate for all students that there were only two tickets this year. This is a sign that the student body doesn’t have faith in the political system. This is best demonstrated by the declining number of voters in the primary election: 1050 voters in the 2006 election, 700 in the 2007 election and only 475 in 2008. It will be up to the winners of this year’s election to change this, and their most important duty will be improving this attitude. While Kim-Griffin’s mettle remains untested, they represent the only hope for the SU to pull itself together next year.