As you can tell from posters around your college and Facebook posts, elections are looming and familiar faces are beginning to resurface. From Bar reps to Sports reps everyone suddenly wants a position of responsibility and has the yearning to deliver a promise that will supposedly change your life. However despite all the ‘witty’ punchlines and embarrassing photos, I really don’t care and the bottom-line is that I am not voting for you.
One reason why I don’t care and won’t vote is because I don’t know you or your manifesto, nor do you know me. Most of the names and faces are not familiar to me despite these people’s supposed notoriety or popularity. What’s more is that these posters never give any clear reason why I should vote for them except for the fact that their Photoshop skills are above average and they can make a relatively decent punchline. Though there are some who are somewhat familiar to me as they either live with me or are in my lectures, (I may have even had a conversation with them), but they still will not get my vote. Why? Because the fact remains that I don’t know you and vice versa. Granted we may have had a nice chit-chat at Freshers’ and again when passing by, but that still doesn’t warrant my vote.
Frankly if you always wanted such a position in college, the effort to be known and liked by everyone should have started earlier and be sustained till now and beyond. But for most people that hasn’t been the case at all, for some it has been the opposite, so why you still come up to me in person and ask for my vote is baffling. No effort, no vote.
If not for insincerity or unfamiliarity, it is also because of reality of the impending outcome. Many have promised to hold more socials; have more chances to have your voice heard etc. but how likely is that going to come into fruition? I ask this because although I am a first year, I am pretty sure the same promises were made last year. If that is the case then why are the same or similar ones being made again? Surely that then implies that promises are difficult to keep and therefore the promises being made are pretty much empty. In this train of thought, to me voting is pointless as I can’t see who would actually make a change come about.
As already stated some candidates are familiar faces and to be frank, while seeing them about their daily activities, the thought of them thinking that they can bring about change is laughable. But I am not one to crush dreams so I applaud them for their effort and maybe they can prove me wrong. Maybe.
So to conclude my point: college elections are a farce to me due to how impractical they are. The reasons for them being impractical is another question altogether. Is it because the candidates are weak or the university doesn’t give them enough free reign? That I don’t know but what I do know is that this time and for years ahead I will not be voting so don’t bother asking.
Christ Vision, are you meant to at least try and live up to the numerous awards you’ve won? This is just incoherent, flawed, tripe.
Tbh mate you just sound like the typical pretentious twat who sits at the back of the College bar judging candidates for wanting to have a good time and give back to College life. You’d be very suprised by the amount of work student volunteers put in to make sure your College experience is one to be remembered. In very few Unis are student freshers’ weeks organised and operated by a bunch of student volunteers, who care about the College and its spirit. To not even let them talk to you frankly shows you to be a bit of an arsehole over the superior being you think you are.