punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

While our pundit-in-chief has seen fit to wait before posting a list of candidates, I don’t share his…patience.  Today is, after all, the Candidate’s Cafe.  Candidates themselves are aware (or will be shortly), and the Gazette is already scheduling interviews.  So let’s get this ball rolling!

While I’m quite confident in the names I have listed here, it is certainly possible that there is a mistake here.  If so, it will be promptly as soon as someone points out my error with excessive expletives.  Without further ado, the following will be the candidate list for the DSU 2010 elections:

PRESIDENT
Neil Bailey
Gregory Debogorski
Imad Mekhail
Chris Saulnier

VICE PRESIDENT (INTERNAL)
Glenn Blake
Tim Hiltz
Kayla Kurin
Henry Whitfield

VICE PRESIDENT (EDUCATION)
Karl Dempsey
Rob Leforte
Evan Price

VICE PRESIDENT (STUDENT LIFE)
Hannah Dahn

SENATE
Christian Browne
Maggie Lovett
Carly Nicholson
Ben Wedge

Stay tuned: we’ll have information soon on what we know so far about each candidate, as well as some early gossip on how the race is shaping up.  In the meantime, we’re still writing this stuff, and there are some candidates we know more about than others.  As such, if you know anything about the people on this list or have any election-related gossip to share, click here and let us know.

Well, top 10, for sure.

Welcome to another year of DSU elections coverage!  The excitement is palpable as the entire campus prepares to suspend its activities to follow the DSU elections closely.  Students with bated breath contemplate who the next candidates will be, and what this year’s POLARIZING ISSUE will be.

Or, you know, not.  Maybe it’s just us.

We’ve kicked things off a bit early by talking about some issues, but soon the campaign will be upon us. In case you didn’t get the memo, campaigning starts on Thursday March 11th, a week from today, and will wrap up on March 21st. Voting starts the next day and will conclude on March 24th – note that is a Wednesday, and not the usual Thursday.

I am delighted to let you know about FOUR new pundits this year (please do not judge them based on my wholly inadequate one-line introductions):

• Janet Conrad, who you’ll remember from her wildly successful run at BoG last year, and who brings her experiences on Studley, Carleton, and Sexton to the team;
• Eric Snow, who you remember ran for president last year, lost, but rather than running and hiding as is the norm, he focused his efforts on DAGS while maintaining his wealth of DSU knowledge;
• Zhindra Gillis, current Sexton campus director who adds additional Sexton heft to the team; and
• Sarah Amyotte, two-time DSU chief returning officer, will move from her role supporting the candidates to a role making sport of candidates.  I, for one, cannot wait.

Nominations closed on Feb 19. Even before that day, thanks to the incredible punditry team, I held in my hands a list of people expected to run. This unusual down-time before official campaigning, 3 weeks of it, has given me time to research, study, and dissect every single candidate, preparing detailed profiles on each of them. Or rather, that would have happened had I not been seized by OLYMPIC FEVER and sheer laziness.  So we’ll just wing it like usual.

Sorry – I’m not going to publish a candidate list until there’s something official, or at least until they all meet at noon today (I speak only for myself here).  I will tell you we expect there to be 4 candidates for president, and >2 candidates for two of the other executive positions, making for some potentially very competitive multi-way races for the first time in years.  We might need more than one preferential ballot round to declare a winner!  There is still one yes/no vote, and the total candidate count isn’t much higher because no BoG seats are available, but it should be good fun nonetheless.

Last year. punditry.ca coverage included 90 posts which garnered a stunning 1,158 comments.  We’re at 55 comments already this year, so keep up the good work and enjoy the conversation!