punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

As many of the more observant elections followers have likely noticed, the posters have been a bit of a mess this year.  Though some of you may not realize just how much of a mess it’s been.  Here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on.

I’ll warn you now that while I try to avoid opinion at the expense of facts in my posts, this one has a bit of a rant farther down.  Agree or disagree in the comments.

What’s wrong with the posters?

Posters weren’t up during the early days of campaigning.  This was based on the CRO schedule, which was designed to give candidates the time to put their materials together.  When they finally did come up, it seemed that candidates hadn’t quite read the “11 x 17″ measurement properly, with posters appearing in several shapes and sizes.  In many cases, the posters were printed off in their original shape and size for quality purposes before being posted by the Elections Committee.

At least one poster changed entirely (Blake’s) in the transition to equalizing the sizes.  As of today, it appears that the poster sizes have been corrected (with the exception of Dempsey’s poster).  At least, where the posters are up at all.  The only reliable place to find the posters is in their usual location in the Student Union Building.

Where have the issues been?

Both the McCain and the Computer Science Building have barred posters entirely.  On Sexton, though there were apparently assurances from the Engineering Society that there wouldn’t be problems with posters on the windows in the A-Building, there have been issues there as well.  The LSC has restricted posters to a small space, while the Dunn Building allowed the posters before deciding they didn’t like them after all, and have since requested that they be removed.  While the posters have successfully made it up in the Rowe, they are mixed in with event posters and flyers and the general purpose posting boards.

If you know any more on other poster locations, let us know in the comments.

While I haven’t heard about official candidate complaints directly, I would be shocked if they weren’t ongoing in any case.  The Elections Committee has apparently had a great deal of internal tension as a result of the problems as well, though reports state that things have stabilized since.

Who screwed this up?

Based on what I’ve seen and heard, I think there’s some of fail to go around.  Fail on the candidates who didn’t get the poster size right (though perhaps it wasn’t emphasized sufficiently this year, given that it hasn’t been a problem in the past).  Fail on the Elections Committee for not being organized and prepared on posters earlier.  On a related note, fail on previous CROs for not including how to deal with posters in their reports (or alternatively, fail on the Executive for not providing said reports to the CRO).  I don’t think any of these problems were big on their own, but they’ve clearly created a mess when combined.

But all of these would probably have been manageable if it weren’t for an extra large whopping fail on the part of the university for not allowing posters in locations where they have been in the past.  I get that they want to avoid spam, but this is hardly a small or a regular activity.  This is a major event across the entire student body that happens once a year for no more than a week and a half.  Hey, candidates?  If I were you, I’d start talking about marching into the Deans Council to talk about this.

We don’t ask a whole lot of the university in our elections.  We want professors to allow class talks, but we respect them when they refuse.  The only other major thing are the posters.  If they want to talk about attracting new students by building a community, then they should be actively helping us do it, instead of barring the way.  That’s just my $0.02.

Word Clouds are quick-look visualizations of the most common words in hunks of text.  They can be used for context-free analysis of text themes (though of course, context-free is not always a good thing).  Like last year, I’m using them to look at platforms, starting with VP Internal.  It won’t find you good ideas on issues mentioned only once, but it is a look at what seems to carry the most weight in the platform.

Methodology.  I used the same back-end tools as Wordle, removed all stop words (common words like the, and, a…), asked for words to be mostly-horizontal, allowed layout to be stochastic, replaced the plural with the singular for common words (like grant/grants), and from time-to-time dropped “-ing” (e.g. work/working).  The input text was a copy-paste of the platforms on March 17.

The shorter the text, the less reliable the word cloud.  INcluding stop words, total platform words for each candidate are Hiltz: 688; Kurin: 1,072; Whitfield: 1,362; Blake: 1591.  Society/Societies was the #1 word for all 4 candidates, followed by Student/Students, so I removed all four of these words.

Glenn Blake

Tim Hiltz

Kayla Kurin

Henry Whitfield

• Some thoughts; note that these comments are ONLY on word clouds unless otherwise specified.
• I begin my analysis by showing the dangers of relying on word clouds.  One might look at Blake’s word cloud and see the dominant word “events”.  The natural conclusion is he is stepping all over the portfolio of VP Student Life.  And he is, a bit, but he knows it – he specifically wants to involve the VP SL in making more events to show-case Dal’s diversity.  Mostly the word is used in the context of supporting or enabling society events.
• The VP I is the communications officer of the DSU.  I was surprised to see that so few words related to the idea of communicating.  Blake has “listserv”, possibly “community” and “show” and “available”.  Hiltz has “handbook” and possibly “meetings” and “available”.  Kurin has “calendar”, “networking”, “information”, “website”, “updated”, and maybe “list” and “regular”.  Whitfield actually has “communication”, as well as “website”, and possibly “residence”  and heavy weight on “available”.  I am surprised to see “website” in only two word clouds.
• “Grants” makes an appearance in every word cloud, and is especially prominent for Blake.  ”ratification“, on the other hand, comes up for Hiltz and Whitfield only.
• Looking at the major unique themes,
  • Kurin has a big focus on the services the DSU provides to students.  ”Accessibility” and “accessible” when taken together would be another major theme.
  • Blake is interested in food and DSU/society events.  (Which overlap heavily with VP FO and VP SL, respectively).  Diversity is also important to his platform.
  • Hiltz is interesting because the major words don’t really map to new ideas; rather they relate to his job description.  Taken together – plan, improve, process, handbook, ratification, committee, grants – it sounds like his promise is to do the job, but to do it better and improve the processes of the DSU.  Fair enough.
  • Whitfield is pushing how he’ll be available. It also sounds like he agrees with Hiltz on taking issue with the current status, talking about  system and process.
• Looking at the major action words,
  • Whitfield’s is pitching that he’ll work hard and put in the time:  “work”, “working”, perhaps “hours”.  ”New” could indicate innovation.
  • Hiltz is talking about a desire to “improve” and “shorten”.
  • Blake wants to “get” things, “give” things, “show” things, and make things “run” and “go”.  Surprisingly all short words.  He also “know”s things.
  • Kurin’s big word is “create” and also uses “new“, which could speak to innovation.  She also uses ”ensure“, which tends to mean seeing to existing programs/duties, but also talks about “new”.  ”work” appears in her cloud; returning to the platform, always in the form “work with”, which speaks to collaboration.
• Whitfield’s is the only one where “residence” makes an appearance, which should not surprise anyone.
• Hiltz’s is the only one where both “Sexton” and “Carleton” appear.

See anything else interesting?  The comments section awaits.