daily wrap-up, day 1
March 10th, 2009
In keeping with tradition, I give you the day’s events.
- Candidates hit the ground running on the first day of campaigning, posting websites, forming Facebook groups, visiting classrooms… and the elections committee launched their own salvo with posters and the candidate profiles & videos on dsuelections.ca. In previous years I would have been concerned at the massive amounts of information, but this year there’s seven of us. Bring it on.
- Speaking of volumes of information, links to most available information for each candidate are in the sidebar on every punditry.ca page: personal websites, videos, Facebook, and twitter. I use this to keep abreast of the online goings-on.
- There were a few snafus with the campaign materials. John mentioned this earlier: Edgar Burns used “ANNSA” instead of “ANSSA“, 3 times. ANSSA stands for the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations. I haven’t figured out what ANNSA stands for yet, but I welcome suggestions.
- On the other hand, Meredith Evans got her Facebook group up without a hitch, and I was impressed with her simple and straightforward description of her future role on Council and Senate… then I fired up Google. Given student senators’ role in academic honesty, I was amused to find two-thirds of it was technically plagiarized, from here and here. Dear oh dear. (side note: a 1/16 plagiarism rate is still better than the last graduate class I TA’d.)
- Don’t forget about the Carleton Candidate forum tomorrow, 12:30, Tupper Link.
- I don’t know about you, but I had a great time reading the posts on punditry.ca today. If you haven’t seen them yet, stop reading my bullshit and scroll down. Jen Bond weighed in first with her early reads on the candidates, Lisa offered early coverage of the posters and described An Afternoon in the SUB on a Campaign Day, Mark lectured the candidates on having an online presence (a topic near and dear to my heart for many years), and Hillman posted a brilliant and amusing photo-log of a day scouring the campaign trail. If these guys had been covering the elections three years ago, no one would have ever heard of me.
- Candidates & pundits are using Twitter, and therefore so am I. Our new Twitter Aggregation page collects in one place twitters from anyone with some association to the elections. It updates every 15 minutes or so (drop us a line if there’s someone we’re missing). You can get a similar feed if you create a twitter account and follow the individual posters’ accounts, but fuck that noise.
- Speaking of bullshit, twitters, tweets, twits, twats, tweeters… it pains me. I want the record to be absolutely clear: in general, I hate Twitter. I didn’t give a shit about your life when you blogged about it, making the posts shorter is a kindness that you completely ruin by making them more frequent. But I recognize their usefulness during elections.
- Speaking of online content and things I hate, I hate the new dalgazette.ca layout. I didn’t like the old design *at all*, I think that’s improved. I know updating the old site was a bitch (I did the updates myself for a few months) so hopefully that’s improved. I just find the new one hard to navigate. Still, progress is being made, and I support that. That’s not *really* an elections-related update, but since their ELECTIONS EXTRAVAGANZA OMG WTF BBQ LOL EDITION comes out Thursday, I expect to spend a lot of time there…
- Speaking of the Gazette, I mentioned Debogorski’s stint as an opinions contributor, but I neglected to mention that the other two presidential candidates have opinion pieces in last week’s Gazette, Zimmerman’s “It’s not about what we don’t have” and Snow’s “The myth of apathy“. The two articles are roughly similar in message, and I think they both make good points. I’ll let you choose which you prefer.
- I’ m done with the segues now.
- Punditry.ca is planning to host an online debate! (if the candidates agree). The challenge was issued late last night; Snow has already accepted the challenge. (I assume he doesn’t sleep, but rather spends his nights poring over constitutions and policies in order to recharge and replenish.) Here’s hoping Zimmerman and Debogorski agree to join us and make a little more student elections history.
- Senate met today, as Mark mentioned – kudos to both VP Education candidates, the two Senate candidates, and the lone presidential candidate who attended. Blake, where were you? Zimmerman, I don’t know how many Senate meetings you’ve attended, I suspect your Senate knowledge is perfectly acceptable, but this is campaigning damn it, put on a show. Debogorski, I had no expectation you’d show up, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t allowed to.
- Classroom talks are in full swing: word from the streets is that when it comes to VP Education, Burns is winning over LeForte. Burns’ talks were described to me as “short and sweet”, whereas LeForte’s were … well, not. Data shows that 35% of voters use classroom talks as a factor in deciding how to vote, so LeForte has to either hope I’m hearing from statistical outliers, or trim down his talk.
- By the way, LeForte’s campaign appears to be backed up by Paul Forrest, who you may recall from Courtney Larkin’s victory over Tara Gault last year. Paul was briefly rumoured as a candidate for president, which would have been pretty exciting, but was not to be.
- Thanks to those of you who are linking to punditry.ca. Our #1 candidate website referrer is ericsnow.ca, with robleforte.ca in second. For this achievement, you will receive… no reward or compensation whatsoever. Sorry. (Also seeing a lot of traffic from Facebook groups, but no way to give credit for that…
- Looks like a few candidates will be making daily/frequent updates describing their life on the campaign trail. At last check, these included LeForte, Snow, Jennex, Rai, and Horne, as well as the fearless CRO. Thanks! (Update: I just noticed Shannon Zimmerman is also blogging, I missed the link from her website the first time.)
- I have to ask, though: Horne, who is the 6th person running for BoG?
- In direct contrast, Mark Hobbs website isn’t working (Mark Coffin also mentioned this). Seriously? You’re the communications commissioner. You’re running for a job that revolves around communication. Get your shit together. His Facebook group closes with “LEARN ABOUT MY CAMPAIGN, MY LIFE AND MY PLATFORM.” I’d love to. Seriously.
- The Craig Jennex clothing line photo shoot is easily one of the best things I’ve seen in my years following these elections. Go take a look.
The first word in ANSSA is Alliance.
For the record, students from SMU came up with the name.
Whoops, got careless, obviously not even SMU students would put “association” in the name twice. Thanks.
For our readers, ANSSA replaces the former provincial lobby group NSSAC. NSSAC, not-so-affectionately referred to as “nut sack”, was the Nova Scotia Student Advocacy Coalition. It fell apart back in 2002-2003 for a lot of reasons, but mostly it was made up of both CASA and CFS schools and they couldn’t play nicely together.
Who the hell has time for senate meetings when taking an overload of classes on only a few hours sleep? Oh and by the way, in the picture below, I was trying to catch a quick nap while my girlfriend was in the washroom.
Who the hell even knows about where or when the senate meetings occur besides the senators? Waste of time for me and many students, although, necessary for the operation of the school.
I would like to address Jen Bond’s comment lower on the page suggesting I do not have a clue on how to fix the Union.
First, I disagree with her; I am a management student; I specialise in managing things efficiently.
Second, my major is in public sector management and my minor in economics. Hhhhmmm. So it would seem that I would be at least knowledgeable, in theory, on ways to manage our Union.
Third, I have done more in the last three years to raise the issue of student disinterest towards their union, and actually create discussion of it, then either of my opponents. A matter of fact, Eric figures there is nothing to be concerned about. Our polyarchy is working great for him. Why should he care?
Fourth, what has changed in the Union in the last year? Besides Snow and Zimmerman’s attempt to further centralise the power of the “in crowd” by eliminating council seats, and make our constitution more efficiently worded. I say give every Union member a vote, and create action not words!
Finally, changing our Union comes down to a matter of attitude. A more transparent Union that students will be more likely to participate in will require executives to make drastic changes in response to student demands. If you get students involved in their Union again (really big “if” here), and they find out that after spending their effort nothing changes, they will go right back to being apathetic. So what is the point in creating greater student involvement if you do not have the right leaders to make it work? Snow? Zimmerman? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!
Miss Bond must go through some hard emotional times when she criticises me, because I have proven her wrong for three years. I have made the right call on the last two governments- status quo!
I have a time conflict with the Carleton campus debate. It conflicts with my Logic Deductions class; I dare not miss it for fear of reprisal from my professor. He is quite stern.
Yikes! Those links are under the descriptions now…!
“Data shows that 35% of voters use classroom talks as a factor in deciding how to vote”
What data?
Mike watches us through our webcams. 35% of people say “You know, I heard a class talk the other day that is definitely playing a factor in this vote,” immediately before clicking submit.
Finally, a shout out from Mike Smit!
I have been waiting for years to get my name on this site.
My life is now complete
@Name (required)
Data is from an exit poll conducted last year. Statistical sample is decent, but error margins are still high because voters self-selected to take the survey and it was anonymous so no way to correct to the actual Dal population.
@a.restful.pro
Political operatives so rarely get the credit they deserve.
@Gregory Debogorksi
Senate meetings are posted quite prominently on the Senate website. The job you are running for requires you to sit on Senate…
How much spoon-feeding should the DSU be doing for students? There comes a point where you have to make at least a token effort to figure shit out.
“Political operatives so rarely get the credit they deserve.
”
It’s true isn’t it? :/
Gregory Debogorksi, I find it ironic that you are a “management” specialist. Does this include anger management? And do you think shouting and screaming in meetings on behalf of students will get results?
Tell you the truth straighttooth, I do not think anyone(maybe Mr Jones) on campus has seen me Mad. Further, I do not think anyone on campus has seen me really shouting and screaming either. When people see me as such, they will definitely know it.
I never said I am a specialist; I said I have been educated in MGMT.
Silly critic.
Mr Smit-
If we had a more participatory structure in the Union’s decision making process, students wouldn’t need to be spoon fed. Further, I find it quite offensive to imply I am asking to be spoon fed for information. Our Union is a corporation; its largest customer is its revenue. Your damn right you bend backwards for them. If the power and organisational structure, in the Union, was more horizontal and decentralised, I would say that “spoon feeding” would be the right metaphor to use. The “big shots” want all the authority, well they get all the responsibility that comes with it. Lets face it, if being president of our Union was a great job, why have all three president’s refused to run as incumbents in the last three years.
With the current direction towards a command and control management model, eventually, you will not find a single student who wants the workload unless they are only taking one course. Hell, it is already half there!
I can see implying that you need spoon-feeding would be offensive. To ensure this does not happen again, I would encourage you to avoid admitting you are unwilling to do a Google search to find out when a Senate meeting is.
I don’t grant the premise that leaving after a year means the job sucks. It’s a hard job, a time-consuming job, and sometimes a soul-draining job, yes, but mostly student leaders have finished their degrees and recognize it is time to move on to other things. However, if I did grant the premise:
1. 2008-2009 president Courtney Larkin decides to not run again, having served 2 years in the DSU executive.
2. 2007-2008 president Mike Tipping decides to not run again, having served 2 years in the DSU executive.
3. 2005-2007 president Ezra Edelstein decides to not run again, having already been president for 2 years after 173 years on Council.
Hardly a picture of an executive desperate to leave the building.
If this comment makes me sound annoyed, its because I am. This annoyance stems completely from the fact you could be a great candidate – even a winning candidate – if you could deliver a coherent message and plan about how “DSU outsiders” need to take back their Union, or something. There IS a message there that I think would add great value to an election. Instead, I get that comment: from spoon feeding, to railing against a non-profit corporation for loving money, to how the job of president sucks, to how we’ll have a hard time finding presidents in the future. This all in response to my original point: probably would have been a good idea to attend a Senate meeting, because at the end of the day, someone needs to represent students there.
It saddens me.
173 years….Nothing compared to your tenure my friend. Not to be one of those annoying correcting people but president for two years would make it 2005-2007.
That it would.
@Gregory Debogorski
Greg, if you check a previous post of yours:
March 10th, 2009 at 06:54 | #3
“First, I disagree with her; I am a management student; I specialise in managing things efficiently.”
I think this is a bold thing to say. Just because you are a student in management does not mean you specialize in managing things efficiently. IN ADDITION to an education, which is meant to open doors for you when you join the workforce, you need real world experience. Not just a co-op term or running a student business over the summer. If you would like to debate this, I’m sure it would make for a good topic, or actually lead into a great campaign platform (hint hint).
With respect to what I perceive as anger on your behalf. It is no secret that on several occasions in your previous campaigns you have repeatedly used an aggressive tact. You have continued to use words like:
March 10th, 2009 at 06:54 | #3
“Who the hell has time for senate meetings when…”
This was not the first time. This type of language and demeanor is associated with you. You have done this at previous campaign speeches and DSU events. This is what is perceived as anger, unprofessional tact and poor decorum. So if we have not seen you really mad, then what should we expect?
I came in 2007.
I am pretty sure that we are all very aware of that Greg.
Hah!
In the past, I’ve been informed by Mike Tipping that the name ANSSA is the great work/heinous error of a Marketing student from Saint Mary’s.
Seeing as I am also currently a Marketing student at Saint Mary’s, allow me to come up with a suitable “backronym”:
Alliance of Non-Nova Scotia Academics
If real, their main mission would be to eliminate out-of-province fees for PSE. Opinions?
Do you know what I can’t figure out? Debo claims he is so overwrought with work that he can’t attend Senate meetings or election debates, and yet he seems to have an adequate amount of time to troll punditry.ca and write long, rambling responses to our every post. Colour me confused.
Agreeing with Mike here, it is sad that there ACTUALLY is a message inside Greg’s campaign that should be listened to. HOWEVER, with all the hot air, unprofessional demeanor (I refer to an Imagine event I went to this year, where you came, made a scene and did nothing to further the discussions) and apparent inability to watch what you say, this message is indeed lost.
I guess this lines Friday’s debate up as a fun one.
Hopefully Greg can make it.
Miss Bond-
Oh the time saving wonders of technology. Call me a nerd, but I love this yearly blog. I love the critics. I love that it is the one time in the year I can keep agitating my peers to vote. Honestly I do not care who my fellow students vote for; I just wish to see students vote.
I must admit that when I check my email every few hours, I do have a few giggles while reading spoof coverage and posts. Further, I campaign every year to direct students to the DSU site and whatever blog we are using.
Last note, after the help desk tells me how to publish my index page using compoZer, I will have much more for my critics to indulge in.