The Tyranny of the Colleges

“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” When George Bernard Shaw said that, I’m quite sure he wasn’t talking about the recent college elections or even anything to do with York. Yet, as the Autumn term ended and the countdown to Christmas began, Shaw’s message was clear: you get what you give, and as was revealed, we certainly hadn’t given much at all.

The elections last term were, to use the political jargon, an absolute shocker. With no one running for positions and less and less voting, it seemed that we as a university had reached an all-time low. Usually in college elections, as with most others, the hype gets bigger as the positions get more important. You can expect for about three or four people to run for chair, two for most other positions and perhaps one for the less significant roles. A month ago, though, it seemed to be like the AV referendum: absolutely no one cared. Of course, it’s understandable if a position like Ordinary Rep or Publicity Officer never gets filled, but if my politics degree has taught me anything, it’s that if no one’s voting and no one’s running, something is most definitely wrong.

First of all, I should state that this is not the situation for all colleges, and those that saw reasonable election results know who they are. Some though, such as Langwith, saw the the top three positions, that of Chair, Vice and Secretary going completely uncontested. The general buzz of Freshers getting involved and taking it all a bit too seriously was all missing. When the results were read out, they seemed to take an abnormally short amount of time while the list of positions that still needed to be filled seemed to flow onto page after page. I convinced myself that RON was an actual candidate just so it didn’t feel like I was voting in Zimbabwe. I started to look around for people to hand me a leaflet or to tell me who to vote for. I even sat staring at the YUSU website, praying to God that some candidate would suddenly appear on the screen offering change and shouting ‘Yes we can’!

Okay, so I didn’t go that mad or imagine Barack Obama was running for College Chair. Nonetheless, I certainly felt the gloom of disappointment as the results rang out and uncontested candidate after uncontested candidate rode comfortably past the finishing line, poor RON trailing at the back. The problem becomes that we start to lose the right to call ourselves democratic. A decision between one person and RON isn’t a true democratic choice, mostly because, although he tries for every position, it seems RON never really wins.

Overall, its a sorry situation. I feel sorry for the incoming JCRCs who are going to have to deal with a bunch of apathetic, couldn’t-care-less students. I feel sorry for the students too, who have had barely any choice and will have to deal with problems if things start to slacken. It seems it’s a general lose-lose situation in which the college becomes less cohesive, the students and reps end up annoyed and disgruntled and the services the college provide get worse. The reputation, though, will be the greatest casualty and probably the hardest one to heal (due to the fact that reputations tend to stick for rather a long time).

And in truth, the blame lies with everyone. It lies with me and you for not standing for anything, or not voting for people. It lies with the last JCRCs who failed to gauge the utter disinterest of the rest of the college and didn’t advertise the elections enough and sooner. It’s a general problem that will start to affect everyone in the colleges, when an event doesn’t go quite to plan or a Chair is too busy to notice something important. It will affect the incoming freshers who are put off by a less than perfect Freshers Week that ruins their relationship with their college for the rest of their years here at York.

What can we do? We should act more like RON; try to sort out the problems that are so easy to complain about. If not, we will find this mess doesn’t improve. George Bernard Shaw was on to something when he said “we shall be governed no better than we deserve”. If we choose for no one to govern us, then what can we expect.