Braving the Campaign Gauntlet

By Ilana Ludwin, ArtSci ’08, AMS Chief

Returning Officer 2006-07

For my first time since I came to Queen’s, I have nothing to do with the AMS elections. During the past three years I worked on the AMS Election Team. This meant I got to read every scrap of publicity from the candidate and referendum teams—flyers, posters, websites, and e-mails; attend every debate; and, of course, read every Journal article. I’ve read a lot of platforms, and I’ve also seen how the winning team actually performs during their year in office.

Year to year, the platforms don’t change much. There are always some gimmicky but impractical semi-recycled ideas. Recent ones have included an AMS reward card and Ghetto Olympics. If we’re lucky, someone might bring back AMS-run ghetto housing.

You can also expect to hear any number of vague statements promising to keep the administration accountable while staying accountable to students, to open up the AMS, to improve the university’s diversity and tolerance, to improve the quality of AMS services, to be a positive voice for students… you get the idea.

This year, especially, you also hear about the Queen’s Centre as well as a nod to the growing green movement. You should also be hearing about the revised Code of Conduct, but I’m not counting on it.

The platforms are highly polished and seemingly sensible. But what those carefully crafted blurbs and three-minute classroom talks don’t tell you is how the candidates will actually perform once in office.

They don’t tell you if the candidates can be counted on to show up to meetings on time, or if they’ll be able to stay on top of the daily floods of e-mail. A large part of the execs’ jobs involves attending meetings for committees you’ve never even heard of, the proceedings of which will never be disseminated. But the impact of this behind-the-scenes work will have a major and lasting impact on student life at Queen’s.

The campaign slogans also don’t tell you whether the team will be able to stick together during the daily grind of work, or if they’ll be able to handle the emergencies that are bound to crop up. How will the team handle a disastrous Homecoming? What will they do if a portion of their council quits, or if a commission melts down half way through the year?

Platforms are just words. The posters, flyers and Facebook sites you’re seeing are, in and of themselves, meaningless. Anyone can spout off endless reams of positive and enthusiastic platitudes. And even if a team makes a quantifiable promise, breaking it will incur no penalty. Words are not enough. What’s important is the quality of the people behind the message.

The only way to be a truly informed voter next week is to learn about the people behind the posters. There are so many ways to do this: stop by a campaign table, e-mail the team or just grab them as they walk by on campus. Ask a friend who has worked with them what they’re like, or ask any campaign volunteer why they’re giving up so much of their time for an unpaid, unrewarded position.

Becoming an informed voter takes time, but it isn’t hard and it’s definitely necessary. It’s too easy to become cynical about the electoral process when all you see are the generic posters, overly-slick platforms and memorized sound bites. Those who become disenfranchised because of this have only themselves to blame; to get a feel for the teams there’s no substitute for meeting the teams in person.

It’s also too easy to complain about the AMS in general, reducing it to an ineffective bunch of resume-padders. Here, the loudest complainers are often those offering only criticism instead of solutions. There are problems with the AMS, but it’s also an amazingly competent and diverse organization with a high level of independence and a surprising number of opportunities available for those willing to take them. The AMS has a huge, mostly unseen, impact on the lives of students. If you stay uninformed or let others choose the winners for you, there’s a good chance you’ll have all of next year to realize the extent of this impact.

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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