punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

My friend and fellow pundit, Jen Bond, and I met in 2002 when we both arrived at Dalhousie as undergraduate students. That year, we had three of our five classes together, as well as a seminar. Though we travelled in different social circles, we both found our way to Council Chambers at the Dalhousie Student Union. Jen would go on to become Vice President (Education) of the DSU while I became a permanent fixture on Council. After completing Pre-Schulich Law School together, Jen and I have, for the most part, retired from student politics, but maintain a keen observer status.

Until now, this has been the truth.

In fact, Ms. Bond and I met much earlier on that world wide network known as “the Internet”. We got to chatting about the usual things that interested high school students at the dawn of the millenium. One night, after a spirited discussion of race relations as portrayed in Bring It On and fuelled by far too many cans of Jolt Cola (this was in the days before Red Bull; we got by on what we had), we devised our plan, and in the summer of 2002, we met covertly in the great state of Maine.

That is when we built Mike Tipping.

It was a summer that tested both our friendship and our commitment to the project, but by the end of August, our dream became a reality.

To ensure no connection among the three of us was suspected upon our arrival at Dalhousie, we applied to live in different residences. I moved into Shirreff Hall, while Jen lived in Eliza Richie, and the Tipping-bot in Howe Hall where he learned the social graces of the average undergrad and developed a tolerance for alcohol. To further our ruse, Tipping was presented as an American while Jen and I made sure to have audible “getting to know each other” conversations at parties and around the Council table (i.e. “Oh, you went to Sydney Academy? Do you know fellow SA graduate X?”)

We enrolled the Tipping-bot in our Political Science class where Dr. Robert Boardman unknowingly aided us in developing the bot’s knowledge of Canadian government. Jen oversaw the development of Tipping’s skills as an orator by involving him in debating. During our time in Maine, I performed a comprehensive survey of what the typical American teenager was wearing those days. Hence, I looked after the bot’s wardrobe, which was to consist of inoffensive, occasionaly namebrand t-shirts, just slightly oversized denim jeans (in order to appear comfortable and approachable, but not unkempt nor like a hipster), and your standard running shoe.

As for Tipping’s political aspirations, as well as our own, we started small with each of us taking a position on our respective residence councils. In order to get the bot some “hippie street cred”, he founded a grassroots organization called Halifax Action. These activist roots were necessary to counterbalance his conservative haircut, especially when faced with a shaggier opponent like Pelley.

After my colleague was made the benefactor of alphabetical election ballots, Jen and I became aware of a fundamental flaw in our plan. Our would-be candidate’s surname was far too close to the bottom of the alphabet. That year, under the name “Elections Review Task Force”, we spearheaded a major re-write of the election rules of the DSU Constitution. With the assistance of our confidant, Ezra Edelstein, and our unwitting fellow committee member and future campaign opponent, the alphabetically-advantaged Ms. Beringer, we ensured that candidate names would from that point forward appear in random order when presented to voters. This proved effective, as our bot successfully won two elections against opponents whose surnames would have otherwise given them an advantage.

Finding himself unchallenged by his human competition, Tipping, with the assistance of Ezra, took it upon himself to build a political adversary. What we neglected to do as guardians of the bot was show him that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Data’s Moriarty figures out how to leave the Holodeck. Had we done that, perhaps he might have reeled it in a bit when programing Deb-bot’s antiestablishment protocols.

Throughout his time in Halifax, the Tipping-bot spoke often of Maine and his fondness for the place where he was born. So, when the time felt right, we let our creation return home. We miss him dearly.