punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

(Welcome guest pundit Henry Whitfield)

Following what I started last year, here are the Top 10 Campaign Ideas of the 2012 DSU Elections.

The purpose of this Top 10? To celebrate some of the great ideas that are put forward, but often forgotten and to highlight some of the great initiatives being championed by our candidates.

Last year’s article can be found here, it is great to see that the Top campaign idea was actually something that happened this year. Kudos to you Chris Saulnier.

These are my Top 10, so I implore you as the reader to drop your favourite and top campaign promises and platform ideas in the comment box below. Don’t forget to play nice.

It can often be cumbersome reading through the platforms, Thank goodness no one pulled a Hillman/Debogorski this year, so without further waiting: Here are my Top 10 Platform Ideas of the 2012 DSU Elections:

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10. Double Sided DSU Printers, Alyssa Phillips, VPI Candidate
Sustainability might not be the uber sexy buzzword of last year, replaced with food in recent years, it’s interesting to see something as simple as this idea on a platform. Sometimes it is about starting small to make a difference, this is one of those ideas that should be easy to implement and starts to make an impact.

9. Financial support for hosting next years National Nursing Conference, Jamie Arron, President Candidate
It may be pandering, it may not be, however including Carleton Campus and making a clear, direct promise to the nursing society is a big step in candidates actually acknowledging that the campus exists. If this campaign promise is kept, it could be a huge step in the right direction for a DSU relationship with Carleton.

8. Flickr Account for DSU, Alyssa Phillips, VPI Candidate
Pictures of actual students on our own DSU website? What a novel idea, she also includes the introduction of a DSU Photographer to help capture the events and societies that students are a part of.

7. 24-Hour Study Space on Campus, Aaron Beale, VP A&E Candidate
A common buzzword and theme from campaigns of days gone by, this is something that i’d love to see put in place. It’s a pretty self explanatory idea.

6. 2000 Students at Home Athletic Events, Alex Hallink, VPSL Candidate
In the words of Barney, Challenge Accepted. Time to see you come through.

5. Athletics/Grawood &T-Room Connection, Aaron Wolf, VPI Candidate
Free cover at the Grawood and T-Room after athletic events at Dalhousie? Well, that’s a pretty sweet idea but i’d start at having the Grawood open after these events. Example? On Saturday night the Grawood was closed directly after the final  men’s varsity game was played at the DMA, leaving a number of groups of Alumni with no where to continue the evening.

A more direct linkage between our fine bars on campus and events occurring at the Dalplex, Wickwire and Arena (RIP), is a step in the right direction.

4. Common Reading Club, Richard Clarke, VP A&E Candidate
Although the idea of books and librarians may have been scoffed at during the Presidential Debate on Monday, (Who uses books anyway? Right?), the idea of encouraging reading and initiating a campus wide literacy program hits right at home with student engagement.

3. Fiscal Sanity, Curtis Johnson, Board of Governors Candidate
It’s admirable that Curtis even put together a platform considering that he is running unopposed for his position, nonetheless, his idea of Fiscal Sanity hits home as our wonderful city is plagued with strikes, the occupy movement and the surging costs of tuition.

2. Bike Share Program, Gavin Jardine, VPSL Candidate
Following the model of the Umbrella Share of the past, which I used to great success when umbrella’s were ACTUALLY PRESENT at the stands, this would enable travel between campuses, running errands and supporting ‘green’ commuting. That being said, would it work?

1. BarCraft/E-Sports League, Andrew Sykes, VPSL Candidate
Did you know the Varsity eSports League was founded by Evan Oberman at our very own school? The league has 29 member schools, and while it’s roots were set at our school years ago, it may just be time we start attracting more students out to the Grawood in different capacities. Clearly time for the gamers of Dalhousie to unite.

** While I read all platforms, if I missed crediting you above, please let us know and we’ll update the post **

(This will be top post during the voting period, scroll down for the new content.)

You should be voting in the DSU Elections if you haven’t already.  If you are still trying to make up your mind, read on.

Opinion: You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting opinion and commentary on this site; use the Search bar at the right to find information about specific candidates, or browse through the various posts.

Convenient access to Information: We have the official Posters of all the candidates for your viewing pleasure, and have links to websites, Facebook groups, and Twitter in the sidebar on the lower right.

We also have FULL TEAM COVERAGE of elections events:

• Hot Chocolate Stations
• Presidential Debate  (also with video coverage)
• Kandidate Karaoke
• Sexton Debate
• Studley Debate
• Video Awards

See also: I recommend the Gazette profiles and CKDU interviews.  As they are the student media you finance, seems logical to avail yourselves of them.

Word clouds for the presidential candidates.  For these I’m excluding any words used only once which makes the results much less cluttered and more relevant.

NB: I used only the “core” platform of each, excluding extensions added throughout the campaign week.  Each has extensions to their platforms on their website.  Unfortunately the core of Arron’s platform is only 330 words; this means a) adding any extension is a strange skew of the numbers, and b) there are only 17 non-stop words used more than once.  (remember, student and societies are considered stop words for DSU elections).

• Like his campaign for VP SL last year, Food is the most common word for Arron.  Bouchard’s top word last year, work, is in the top 5 again this year.
• You see change in Arron’s; Bouchard talks about new things but also puts heavy weight on continue.
• Bouchard shows explicit acknowledgement of a leadership role (support, executive, team) while Arron puts more weight on outreach.
• When I read the platforms, I noted the same difference I saw in the Larkin-Gault race a few years back, the last time a sitting VP SL went up against a sitting VP AE (or equivalent).  The VP SL tends to look inward, talking about events and engagement and reaching students.  In comparison, the VP AE tends to focus outward, highlighting external advocacy (though also internal academics).  Both recognize the importance of adding the other perspective, knowing the president has to mix both.  For my money, Bouchard did this better out of the gate (of the two, she’s the only one to mention CASA, ANSSA, advocate, while also mentioning food, SUB, engaged, etc.), but Arron has worked hard to add these components to his campaign including the lengthy external advocacy document posted late last night.

Arron

Bouchard

From your ever-loving pundits, this year’s addition of the Presidential Debate Drinking Game.

Take 1 drink if:
-If Jamie is wearing a button up shirt
-Someone says ‘collaborate/collaboration’
-Someone talks about O-week
-Someone says ‘DSU’
-Chris asks a question with the word ‘hub’ in it
-someone talks about food services
-Jamie moves in front of the podium for his opening statement
-either of the candidates are drinking coffee
-if an audience member asks a question that is just a statement, not a question

Take 2 drinks if:
-Jamie takes the mic out of the stand
-Jamie moves in front of the podium to answer a question
-Someone brings up Charity Ball
-Someone gets the name (or acronym) wrong for ANSSA
-Someone talks about feminism
-Chris asks a question with the word ‘platypus’ in it
-Chris asks a question with the word ‘dinosaur’ in it
-Any of the candidates mention Punditry
-Sarah’s shark makes an appearance

Finish your drink if:
- Chris asks a question about sex
- Either of the candidates incorporate one of these celebrities into their answers: Justin Bieber, Whitney Houston (RIP), Miley Cyrus, J-Lo, 50-cent, Chris Brown, Adele.
-Either of the candidates sing

It’s that time of year again – we’re assembled at the Grawood to listen to the Presidential candidates speak. Greg Debogorsky will be missed, as will his three xtra-large Tim Hortons coffees. That’s 72 oz of coffee per debate! Check out the liveblog below.

Welcome, once again, to the Election Candidate Video Awards!

Sunday being the usual night for award shows (hopefully we won’t be drawing too much attention away from tonight’s Grammys and BAFTAs), I am pleased to bring you the fourth annual ECVAs wherein I distribute “awards” to the candidates for their campaign videos. There are no fixed categories. Consideration has been given to the videos posted on the official election bio pages, as well as supplementary videos available on candidates’ websites, if applicable.

Have ideas for other honours? Share them in the comments.

Find out the “winners” after the jump… Read more…

You may be familiar with a particular class of meme where a character is presented with a colourful background and some sort of amusing or ironic or otherwise clever text is displayed.  Often the top line of text is somehow juxtaposed with the bottom line.  Often they aren’t nearly as funny as the creator thinks, but that’s not the point. [Read more at the Meme DB]

In a punditry.ca collaborative effort, we bring to you the Presidential Meme.  Use the pages below to generate your own for the presidential candidates.  Experiment all you want; the submission page will give you the code to embed in a comment (remember to click the Generate Embed Code link).  Our resident technical expert has only questionable expertise, so the tools are neither pretty nor particularly robust… no warranty etc.

Sarah Bouchard

Jamie Arron

We’ll illustrate a few below so you get the idea.

Of course you can just type your captions as comments instead.