Sunday morning at 10, voting begins for Undergraduate Student Government offices. As they have every year, lamp posts all over campus have begun to sprout campaign posters, even as the trees shed their leaves. It is all part of the natural Order of Things. People are born; they are admitted to Princeton; they run for USG; they make empty, naïve, or just plain absurd promises; win; graduate; and die. We all know that USG elections don't matter, unless of course you're running, or your roommate is running, or your roommate's friend is running, and so on. After all, no one thinks the USG can actually do anything.
Quick Quiz: Who are your Class Officers?
See?
Still, you really should vote in this election. Think of it as an opportunity to send a message to the resume-grubbers who have so long murmured straight-faced promises of more dialogue, more diversity, delayed late meals, Sugarcandy Mountains, dialogue about diversity, and dialogue about delayed late meals. When candidates lack even this much originality, they resort to cute slogans. Upperclassman may remember one student who ran for USG a few years ago. He speckled our walls and halls with posters: Himself, smiling, with the caption "Vote for ——, Because My Mom Thinks I'm Cool."
It's all very funny. But at the same time, the fundamental illegitimacy of the USG is a real problem. The USG could be a genuine defender of student interests on campus, if it were taken seriously. And we would do well to remember that the Honor Committee is largely pulled from its ranks. Moreover, there are (some) serious USG officers, who really care about the pressing issues facing Princeton: Honor Code Reform, the Athletic Moratorium, the expansion of the Student Body, sexual abuse at Bicker, and the Borough's Blitzkreig against "undesirable elements" on Prospect Street.
Ah, but you scoff! As scoff you should. These elections are becoming a bore. Nothing much ever comes of them. A few years in Princeton will turn the most starry-eyed student government fanatic into a bitter cynic. Every candidate has a raft of legitimate and worthwhile pledges: 24 hour study spaces, etc., etc. Our beef with these is that they've been proposed by every campaign since we arrived on campus. We can only infer that they are the USG equivalent of tabletop cold fusion.
Grizzled Washington (road) insiders that we are, we clamped our noses and dunked our heads below the surface of the simpering swill brewed from the campaign websites, promotional posters, and candidates' statements of this most recent orgy of electoral excess.
Some of them are even novel: The CS major writing this column would certainly welcome the expanded wireless network pledged by one candidate. But we suspect that the University has already decided that technology is A Good Thing. Pledges such as these demonstrate many USG officers' uncanny ability to lick a finger, raise it high in the air, sense which way the winds of Nassau Hall policy were already puffing,and take credit for them.
We'll kick off the catalogue of atrocities with financial aid for eating club dues. Regardless of the obvious ethical problems arising from funneling university funds into date rape and binge drinking, to so insult the intelligence of the electorate is a grave mistake. Even the freshest freshman, fresh off the train from Squeedunk, ought to know that the University has chosen the four-year College as its next Great Leap Forward. To spend an extra cent on the Clubs would be to drown that desirable and underage reform in a sea of watered-down Beast.
Here's another one we can't stand: A particularly nasty jumping-meme has spread throughout the campaigns, with candidates for every office proclaiming the God-given Right to x free copies per semester. Those of us who occasionally copy a monograph in Firestone would be mildly tickled; but we can think of the one campus population who would benefit most from a bushel of gratis xeroxes every semester: flyer-making politicians.
One candidate produced a real gem, promising to "alleviate midterm week stress." We doubt any USG officer has the strength to do so singlehandedly, but we wish them all luck.
We urge you to vote not for the candidates who promise the most, or who ingratiate best, but rather for those who promise least. We urge you to vote for those who exhibit some degree of honesty, courage, passion, and character, and who at least appear to take students seriously.
So who should you vote for? Naturally, we don't have any particular recommendation.
We're too tactful.
Joseph Barillari '04 assisted significantly in the writing of this piece. Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky is a Wilson School major from New York, N.Y.
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