Today’s Contemporary Americana!
When I see stories like this, I’m reminded of the movie Election. In America, we train our kids in the ‘win at all costs’ mindset early. In this case, this story, from The Ohio State Lantern, details the disqualification of two student government candidates for spending more than $2,000 on their bid.
From the story:
Undergraduate Student Government presidential and vice presidential candidate team Peter Koltak and Amanda Graver were disqualified from the presidential race last night.
The decision was made after allegations concerning the team’s campaign finances.
Though they are currently disqualified, Koltak and Graver will have the opportunity to appeal the decision by submitting formal documentation.
“Obviously we feel that the wrong decision was made, and we plan to appeal it,” Koltak said.
He would not comment further based on the temporary nature of the decision.
“If their appeal is not overturned by the board, their votes will not count towards the election,” said Alex Liber, director of the Election Governance Board.
According to judicial panel documents, Koltak and Graver were in violation of campaign bylaws:
“The Judicial Panel finds the Defendant in violation … for running a campaign valued at more than $2000. After due consideration, the Panel finds that the only appropriate penalty for this infraction is disqualification.”
According to the EGB, there were 41 violations filed against Koltak and Graver during the election. The other two presidential and vice presidential teams only had a combined five violations filed against them .
And the thing is, the vast majority of undergrads at OSU (my son among them) knows not nor cares about the people running for student government. After all, in almost every academic environment, student government officials have very limited, if any, real power to affect anything at their schools, except to perhaps have an extra pep rally scheduled or some other kind of entertainment event bankrolled.
The real power, is, as always, with the institution. And when you look at most student governments, sad to say, that’s probably where it belongs.
It seems that most of these kids run for the benefit of their own resume than to really do much for the students or school; at least that has been my experience. When I was at Cleveland State, the vast majority of the students completely ignored the student government. But the races were waged with all the cutthroat viciousness we see in every other grownup election from school board to POTUS.
Because, of course, it looks good on that resume. And how many of these races are run with a generous dose of mommy and daddy’s money to make junior look good? I would guess quite a few.
But make no mistake about it - the people running take it very seriously. And perhaps that is funny and sad in a rather tragic way.
And I wonder how many of these kids see themselves running for President one day? Someone said we should never vote for president anyone who wanted to run for the office when they were a kid. Seems Bill Clinton was one of those kids.
Ah, we never learn.
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