punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

I got a tip from a student who emailed the DSU President and the Loaded Ladle to request copies of their business plan.  No one replied. (The loaded ladle DID add him to their mailing list and send him a campaign email.  He was not impressed.)  I appluaded his efforts, and was able to provide a copy. If you want The Real Document, the only online source I know is a Scribd Document.  Since there does appear to be at least some interest in knowing the plan beyond “feed students”, I summarize the plan below.

To put my biases on the table, I am a believer in local food.  One of my favorite parts of going home to my family is access to vegetables grown in our garden, fresh eggs, fresh milk, meat from animals grown on the farm (pork, beef, chicken, and maybe mutton soon), and more.  It’s a luxury not available to most people and almost never to students.  I think providing it to students is a Good Idea – if they want it.  I’m not wild about the idea of paying a society an annual fee to promote a political view, but recognize that this is already done for a number of student organizations. I don’t agree that I am unethical because I eat meat. I believe that organic farming is 95% PR. The Loaded Ladle Levy will not affect me in any way, so I have no particular passion one way or another.

I tried to keep my biases, and any opinions about the contents, out.  But sometimes I just can’t help myself, so you’ll see an opinion about science and another about governance.  Nothing major.

It should be noted that this is a plan and is subject to change.  In particular, the DSU has not endorsed this plan, and discussion elsewhere on this page indicates that the Society Review Committee may make some modifications.  Still, the goals and intent of the organization are of interest, regardless of whether or not they can be carried out.

• Mission is “providing an ethically-sourced food service”, “public forum available for all students to join and participate”, “educate the public on the food politics on campus and social and environmental issues which surround food”, and “use food to build a greater sense of community”.
• Students will support directly (via $2 levy) and indirectly through the DSU ($500 grant and an unvalued in-kind donation to provide space in SUB. A table in the lobby isn’t that substantial; a dedicated kiosk is quite substantial. Since I can’t fairly assess the value of this expected donation, it is not included in budget figures).
• Total start-up costs: $11,900.00, basically all equipment, but that includes “$40,250 of short and long-term assets” which are unspecified.
• “At least” one food serving per week [edited Mar 7 to add 'at least']
• “At least” 200 students expected per serving. (Anyone know attendance now?)
  • Doing the math for you: if the minimum is achieved exactly (it could be more, it could be less…), that’s 6400 meals a year, at $5.31 a meal (based on total expected revenue).
• $1 per meal for non-students
• A market analysis is provided, but it’s based on a “study” which isn’t cited and I can’t find using Google. No methodology is described. Poorly labeled graphs are shown. I won’t dignify them by including them here; scientifically, they aren’t worth the bytes they consume on my hard drive.  I was so annoyed after reading about this “Research” that I had to go do something else for a while.
• Three coordinators: Outreach, Operations, and Events.
• Revenue mostly from levy
• Budgeting for a $12,000 surplus, with a $2500 emergency fund (“unallocated”). Given the dominance of the word “Food” in the word cloud, it is a bit surprising to see it only make up 30% of the budget.  Figure to the right; categorization of the expenses is mine, but I stand by it.
• Budgeting for 25 opt-outs
• Salaries are actually “Honoraria” [ugh, hate that word], earmarked for “Speakers and presenters”. [added Mar 7]
• Surplus to be used to “enhance the organization’s operations.”
• Future plans included permanent space in the SUB.
• Details on bulk food prices.
• Sample menu. I personally would eat 7 of the 17 proposed dishes. (I don’t like most beans. Or tofu.).
• Actual name is Dalhousie Food-Cooperative.
• Although Dal students all pay a levy, they are not automatically members (huh?) and cannot vote in AGM, elections, or… anything.  (My comment: I think it’s pretty bitchy to ask every Dal student to pay an annual levy to support you, but not automatically give them voting privileges.)
• You can be a member if you sign up for the mailing list (“Ally List”), which is open to anyone in the world who wants to do so.  You’ll get periodic mail updates. You can also volunteer.
• Only members of the “Ally List” or volunteers can vote.
• Governed by an 8-member board that will have minimum three Dal student members.  Other 5 can be from anywhere. (You must be a volunteer and have volunteered twice to serve on the board.) Board elected at AGM.
• Quorum is 2/3rds; decisions made by consensus or by agreement of 80% of board members.
• AGM decisions made by consensus or 2/3rds vote; only “Ally members” and volunteers can vote.
• Board members must subscribe to the ideology of the Loaded Ladle.

If you think I missed something crucial, let me know in the comments.  Finally, the word cloud:

This won’t be news to all of you, but this post (or a version of it) will be “stickied” at the top of the page during the voting period in case anyone looking for information finds this site.

You’ll find links to the dsuelections.ca profiles, Facebook groups, candidate websites, and Twitter feeds in the sidebar to the right.  There is also a summary Twitter feed.  The @punditry Twitter feed also exists. Hillman, Connors, Loaded Ladle Yes, and Loaded Ladle No have blogs that lived past the second day of the campaign.

Dal Gazette coverage for each position went online today, if you missed the dead tree version somehow.

Copies of all the candidate posters are posted electronically.

Construction of Presidential word clouds proceeded as normal – at first (what’s a word cloud?).  Hillman’s famed 11-page manifesto clocked in at 3,862 words, Fiszman at 1,552, and Saulnier at 1,227.  Each word cloud includes 135 words (based on how many words appear more than once in Saulnier’s platform).

I did Hillman first, and was shocked, SHOCKED I say, at what I found:

The untouched John Hillman word cloud

“Rejoice Debogorski Lives”? What’s happening?  Closer examination shows some other strange words: “obey”, “nudity”, “violence”.  (You might think “hidden agenda” is also strange, but that’s actually in the platform.  Go read it to figure out why.)

Turns out Hillman added hidden text to his platform. You don’t see it when you read it, but you can search for it (Shannon Z also spotted this phenomenon) and it shows up when I convert it to plain text to generate a word cloud.  He did this to intentionally screw with my word clouds, and for this he will surely be punished in some way.

I pulled out his hidden text to produce the more accurate word clouds below.

Today’s challenge is:

• compose a sentence for each candidate using their most prominent words (Remember, you can insert words that are removed automatically; a, the, in, of, and.  Note that ‘student’ and ‘students’ are also removed as they tend to dominate the word clouds).
• identify 2 similarities and 2 differences between Saulnier 2011 and Saulnier 2010. (I created a new Saulnier 2010 word cloud using the exact same settings for easy comparison).

John Hillman

Sebastian Fiszman

Chris Saulnier 2011

Chris Saulnier Version 1.0

Chris Saulnier 2010

The last remaining official campaign event is the Elections Breakfast, March 7, 8:30am – 10:30am, SUB Lobby.

Eric announced Kandidates Karaoke, tonight (Friday) at 8pm in the Grad house.

A third event, also ‘unofficial’ but no less brilliant, is being hosted by the Dal Undergrad Poli Sci society: a Wine & Cheese Meet & Greet. It runs Monday night from 6-9pm at the University Club [sweet venue].  The concept is to bring voters and candidates together for a Q&A session and general socialization.  All students and candidates are welcome and invited.  This level of society engagement without a hidden agenda (right?) is beautiful thing; kudos to DUPSS.  I see 41 Attendings and 28 Maybes, so I predict nothing less than epic success.

The invite text is on their Facebook page, candidate’s FB pages, and sprinkled throughout comments and other online sources.  In case you haven’t seen it, invitation text follows:

All candidates running for positions in the DSU election, as well as representatives from both referendum questions are invited to attend a Wine & Cheese, Meet & Greet hosted by the Dalhousie Undergraduate Political Science Society. The event will give all candidates an opportunity to socialize with students and make the final push for their campaign on the closing evening of the week. In an informal, social setting, the event will also consist of a Question and Answer session, allowing students to ask direct questions to candidates on any issue about their platform, their campaign, background or experience. THIS IS NOT AN ALL CANDIDATES DEBATE. This will hopefully run more like a press conference, than the more constrictive traditional debate style. Candidates will not be able to rebut out of turn, however they may address any concern that arises in another candidates answer in when it is their turn to answer a question. There will be no limitations on the field of questions, and we will take as many questions from as many students as time and candidate’s presence permits. While there is no restriction on questions, aggressive personal attacks, slander and abusive behaviour will not be tolerated, and Dr. Lori Turnbull, the undergraduate advisor in the Political Science Department, period will be moderating the Q&A.

The emphasis of this event is to boost voter turnout, as well as increase the voters access to first hand information from their candidates. We hope that this event will give students and candidates a chance to mingle socially, allowing voters to really get to know their candidates in a relaxed way, while hearing candidates discuss campaign issues at the same time.

There will also be wine…and cheese.

We look forward to seeing you all!

-DUPSS

The twitter-scape-osphere was alive this morning with debate about the Loaded Ladly Levy articles that appeared in the Gazette: Anti-levy and Anti-Dalhousie Liberty Society.  The conversation actually included comments on whether there was libel. The two protagonists tweet as @michaelmkennedy and @justin_ling.

I won’t get into the contents of the article, but two things struck me as strange.

First, it looks like portions of the pro-levy article respond specifically to parts of the anti-levy article (for example, the 45-minutes-in-line part).  Does anyone know what’s up there? Did both authors get a preview copy of each other’s pieces or something? [Edit March 6: There is a pseudo-denial in the comments, but word on Twitter is that the pro-levy anti-DLS article author was provided a copy of the anti-levy article.]

Second, the no-levy people have been using the “you pay they eat” phrase a lot; I was amused to see the author of the pro-levy article report his desire to pay $2 per year and eat Ladle food “several dozen times”.  If you’ve read the business plan*, you know the current minimum target number is 200 meals per week.  Serving 8 months a year and not during school breaks, that’s about 32 weeks where meals are served.  That is 6400 meals a year, or 2/5ths of a meal per Dal student.  Taking the minimum definition of several (3), that’s 36 meals.  The author plans to eat the share of 90 students, or $180 worth of food. That’s all well and good – that’s what social programs are for, after all – but it amuses me to see both sides vehemently asserting the same point.

Join the twitter battle that @punditry predicted three days ago, or have your say in the comments.

*  Edit: Citing my source.  I used my copy of the business plan, which appears identical to the Scribd document conveniently already posted online.  The business plan was produced by the Loaded Ladle but the DSU Board of Ops made a point of indicating they did not endorse it.  It’s not clear to me what that means but I feel that should be noted.

Word clouds are visual representations of individual, context-less words from a body of text.  They can be useful for identifying themes, repeated word, and so forth.  They are especially useful for very long documents you don’t want to read in their entirety, but are fun for shorter documents as well.

This set is for the VP SL candidates.  Their platforms are all about the same length (350-400 words); the word clouds include every word in their platform, sized according to frequency.  Common english words (articles, prepositions) are excluded. Colours and orientation are random (colours just make it easier to read).

Building sentences from dominant words, we have the plausible “want [to] see great DSU events” from Reid.  We have what I assume is excitement about Monday’s pancake breakfast (“great food [in] SUB lobby“) from Arron.  And finally, “Want increase year one [at] Grawood events” from Dobbyne, which I assume is a desperate plea for more underage drinking. (It’s just another sign of how Glee is destroying the moral fabric of our society).

What do YOU see?

Jamie Arron

Tom Dobbyne

Adam Reid

The middle of a very busy campaign period may not be the best time to ask this question, but… this is when people read the site.

The punditry editorial policy, such as it is, has been in place since the beginning: anonymous comments are allowed , and no comments are censored or edited.  Pundits, once they join, have unlimited posting privileges and operate independently.  Contributors, once they contribute, are generally welcome to contribute again.

There is a degree of coordination and communication (227 emails to the pundits mailing list so far this season), but no centralized control or content.  There is no “editor” or “moderator” as those terms are usually understood.  There is maintenance – the electronic equivalent of changing lightbulbs.  Content decisions, when they rarely arise, are discussed among pundits.  Punditry exists only because of active participation of commenters and contributors.  It is the community that is the only indispensable portion.

The question for said community is: should the editorial policy change? Things started out fairly tame, but some of you may have noticed a bit of a spike in anonymous comments that… shall we say… aren’t always as kind as they could be.  Take a moment to reflect on how things work now, and offer your comment.  Some primer questions: should things carry on the same or is change needed? are there legitimate reasons for remaining anonymous? should there be community standards? can they be enforced? are technical approaches used elsewhere – like a comment up-vote/down-vote system – worth it? what about forcing registration? can standards be deployed without hurting the community? Generally: a) is there a problem, and b) if yes, is there a solution.

Don’t think about it so much that you are in danger of taking punditry.ca seriously, however.  That would ruin the whole effect.