Oh. I thought it was on the same ballot as with the engineers, who have their own CRO and rules, but opted to run the voting periods concurrently. Thanks for the clarification!

In terms of encouraging turnout, the DSU should consider giving grants to societies who have the best turnout (as a percentage). This is easy to track and could encourage more interest in at least the elections.

Oh, also an aside: law students run their elections independently of the DSU elections, though with the same software.

I think what the DSU, as a whole, needs to do is be more active in supporting societies. If we can make the DSU website, rather than Facebook, the go-to tool for event info at Dal, then I think we’ll see an increase in participation. If we can better use societies to disseminate information, then I think we’ll be better off too. People listen to those that they know. Not everyone in the engineering society knows me personally, but most of them seem to know what I do (make class announcements, edit the Sextant, and sit on DSU Council). I think when I make an announcement, there’s more relevance to it than if Shannon Zimmerman showed up and did it, because most of them don’t know who she is.

I think that idea can be spread to societies. People may be involved in Water Polo, Tea Drinking, Israel Awareness, Table Tennis, or whatever. We need to make those societies a two-way street. We support them, they support us. If Kevin Chong told his table tennis club that Candidate X helped their society out by doing something, I’m sure they’d all vote.

That’s the important thing. Not creating big ideas, new websites, and grand schemes. We need to invert the DSU and create a bottom-up rather than top-down structure. Communication would flow down channels from Council/the Exec to societies, then individuals. Give the societies a reason to promote us (because we help them, so we need to do it well.)

This post was wayyy longer than anticipated. So, a summary: the DSU Exec has no hope of connecting to the average student. They do have a hope of connecting with 30 councillors and fewer than 187 society president, who have a hope of connecting with the members below them, and that’s how we can promote the DSU and make it cool and relevant.

you never shared your thoughts behind your predictions!

I could bounce the question to someone else, perhaps an actual Dal student, but I’ll actually offer some thoughts.

For the record, I believe that voter turnout is not a reliable indicator of the relevance of an organization, or even of the perceived relevance of an organization. Some other time we can discuss why I think this is provably false. However, I don’t dispute that a lot of students have no idea what the DSU does or is, so it’s worth talking about, but I’ll do it separately.

1. Voter turnout sucks. It makes me sad. Voter turnout at universities Canada-wide is poor. St FX was heralded as a Miracle School for hitting 60%, and that was after a concerted effort and substantial investment, and is a priority that they are disputing. The big universities range from about 3%-20% (but they don’t all vote online). The little big universities, like Dal, range from 15%-25%. In Nova Scotia, Acadia SU hovers around 40%, SMUSA struggled toward 15% this year. In short: the DSU is not alone.

Of course the problem goes beyond student unions. A quick Google for some numbers showed that turnout among 18-24 year olds ranges from 30-40% in the US during a presidential year, and under 20% for mid-term elections. In Canada, it’s around 40%. Is the federal government only twice as relevant to youth as the DSU? Again: the DSU is not alone.

Why don’t they vote? No idea. When I don’t, it’s because I don’t know the candidates or don’t really care who runs, and figure someone else should make the decision. When they hold a referendum I have an opinion on, I vote.

We do, however, have some idea of why they DO vote. Last year, the DSU surveyed students who voted; 42% completed the survey. Of those respondents, 32% were acquainted with a candidate but had no involvement with the DSU; 6% were involved with the DSU but didn’t know a candidate, and 16% were both. Their motivations are, I think, fairly easy to understand. A surprising 46% had no DSU involvement and knew no candidates personally, but voted anyway. Why? Most first heard about the election from a candidate who encouraged them to go vote (43%), or from friends who ARE involved (19%). 10% first heard from the email encouraging them to vote. Given that we know the email went to everyone, but that the exposure of friends/candidates is limited by space and time, personal connections are far more likely to attract students to vote. I theorize that seeing the DSU as people just like you and me, instead of a nameless, faceless organization is valuable.

2. On relevance.

I’ll start by saying in my personal view, it is far more important that the DSU *be* useful than that it *appear* relevant.

The DSU as an organization supports the existence many other groups on campus, many of whom have great voter turnout – the Engineers hit nearly 50%, the law students broke 80%. If you accept voter turnout as an indicator of relevance, I think it is more important that the DSU continues to support the smaller groups that are able to have a closer connection with students. Beyond a certain size, a personal connection is very, very hard to establish. That’s why you have councillors from these groups that make up the DSU Council: hopefully you get better connections with a more diverse range of students than any executives or staff members could achieve.

Of course, appearing relevant is valuable, because it makes people happy explicitly. There are some easy things to do, some of which are being done and some of which aren’t. It’s not like the DSU isn’t trying to communicate with students, it just doesn’t always go that well. The biggest let down right now is the website. Hopefully the new one has better content than the old one, and isn’t just a whitewash. I don’t know why “What the DSU does for me” isn’t there, or why the annual report isn’t more obvious. I personally complained a few years ago because the student fee breakdown had disappeared; most students don’t know that only half of the money they give the DSU goes to general DSU operations. Forums for discussing issues might also help.

The DSU has tried focus groups, classroom talks, mass brainstorming sessions, monthly emails, and so on. There’s always more it can do (I like Debogorski’s polling,referendum,and debate system idea), but there are also limits. You can lead a student to information about the DSU, but you can’t make him or her give a shit. “To learn what the DSU does for you or does with your money, go to this website” seems pretty reasonable to me. Hopefully some day soon, you’ll be able to.

The comparison was only meant for voter turn out and nothing more.

In terms of solutions, there is a good amount of responsibility on the DSU’s end to make sure students know how much of a benefit it is actually having a DSU. I know that the majority of people I talk to have no idea what the DSU’s purpose is and how they actually help out the student population.

What do you think should be done?

If your point is that 16% is lower than we’d all like to see, and that this is sad, I agree entirely. Thank you for your penetrating insight… now, solutions?

If your point is that federal government and a student union should be the same, I disagree entirely. They aren’t even really comparable.

@Smit: The next 12 months will be so boring… time to take off the RSS feed and find something more exciting to do…

@lol
If you’re referring to John, he wanted to write a program that would leave pundit comments on all pages thus taking down punditry.ca. Awesomeness.

The glorious “Smit” overlooks all others upon a throne at the center of the very top of the cloud.

(Eric Snow. Eric Snow. Eric Snow.)

Between John Hillman and Sarah Amyotte, I’m surprised my name isn’t dominating the clouds entirely. =)