punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

Here we go. This is a long one, folks. You might want to get some popcorn and settle in. Rather than save the audience questions for the end of the post, I’ve just lumped them in under each position for ease of reading. I did have to leave a few minutes early, so I missed the last couple of audience questions. Also, I apologize in advance for any sentence fragments, and I have put some of my comments in italics to ensure they are not mixed up with candidate comments.

President

For openers, Snow thanked everyone for attending, mentioned his experience with Senate and HSA, 24-hour study space and food service, and his website. Zimmerman thanked the organizers of the debate, referred to the SUB as her first home rather than her second, and mentioned her experience on Council, BoG, and student societies.

For the first question, candidates were asked to describe their leadership qualifications. Zimmerman said that she has had lots of involvement on all campuses. She feels BoG is the most important role of the President outside the SUB and has experience as current BoG representative. She also feels it is important not to talk only to students, but also to societies, deans, etc. Snow told us he knows the rules and procedures (even wrote some). He knows President is not an all-powerful role and believes there should be consultation beyond Council (athletics, residences, etc.) He wants to get students involved as much as possible and believes the more students that are involved, the better. Zimmerman said she believes in talking to students more than in policies and procedures. She believes in talking to people in all outlets in campus. Snow agrees with consulting with students but said one must understand the procedures for doing this (i.e. know who to go to on various issues).

I must say I’m a little confused by Snow on this one. I understand that one might need to know how certain networks are structured to find the most efficient way of addressing and issue, but in terms of direct consultation with students, I don’t believe we need to refer to any policy.

Question two was about media attention. Is it good or bad? How will they present the image of the DSU? Snow said he’s no stranger to media and isn’t shy to speak to crowds. He sees media attention as a double-edged sword (Everyone wants a piece of you, eh Eric?) He is looking into getting official media training. Here, Zimmerman made her first of a couple references to the Executive Team. She would consult with other members of the Executive because they should be working together on representations to media. She believes media should be used to educate and give background on issues facing the Union, and that the Exec should resume weekly interviews with CKDU that started and stopped at some point this year. She would endeavour to have student consultation before speaking to media. While Snow agrees on consultation with Exec, he pointed out that the President takes responsibility, as official spokesperson, for what is said. Zimmerman also raised the fact that the DSU has a General Manager and Communications Coordinator whose strategic capabilities can help executive who are new to interacting with media.

Question three was about the strategic plan/Imagine DSU. Candidates were asked what was the most pressing issue students raised this year during Imagine. They were also asked about the future of Imagine. Zimmerman mentioned the campus master plan, 24-hour study space, and local food service. She feels it was a good idea to have a full-on campaign this year rather than a single event, but feels the process has lost momentum. She thinks the process should start at the beginning of the year, rather than waiting until the Winter term to have consultations. Snow agreed that students raised 24-hour study space and the master plan, but feels local food on campus was the biggest issue. He wants more comment cards near services in order to find out how to pursue student interests.

In closing, Zimmerman plugged her website and said her name twice in addition to her URL. Snow plugged his Website and five campaign points, saying his name once in addition to his URL. Someone’s taking my advice.

Check out the rest of the recap after the jump.

Read more…

Lisa, John and I were all at the Studley debate today.  I think Lisa’s going to do a full recap, so I’ll just stick with a few of my “friendly observations.”

President:

Only Snow and Zimmerman showed up.  Debo made a cameo during the VP Education portion of the programme, but had left by the general question period.  I’m sure he had a class.  I’m also sure half of the other candidates also had a class…but I digress.

Snow isn’t confident at the podium, Zimmerman looks relaxed and at ease.   Zimmerman doesn’t have awesome voice modulation, Snow is an engaging speaker.  They both need to work on their eye contact.

They both answered questions well, but let’s face it, this is for all the marbles, they aren’t going to screw it up.

VP Internal:

Can we just elect them both?  They are so committed and really know their stuff.  I am concerned/confused about Mark’s plan to have a DSU website that can be updated by anyone.   There’s info on his website about how we could do this. I have no question that it *can* be done, I’m just not sure we *should* do it.   Mark did, however, show that he was a class act when he stood up for his opponent in the face of attack.  Bravo.

VP Education:

I’m surprised how much Burns knows for being a newbie to the scene (he’s so young looking I feel like if I got close enough, he’d smell like womb).  LeForte demonstrated that he knows both a whole lot about the intricacies of PSE funding and also how to tie a double windsor knot.  I approve of both.   Once again CASA is a hot topic.  Burns says we should drop down to associate member status.  He hasn’t given me a good reason why.

VP Student Life:

Kris is running unopposed.  Like John, I say if he wants the job again, we should give it to him.

Senate:

Best.  Race.  Ever.  Between Simms’s quirkiness, Evans’s adorable/genuineness and Blake’s general smile inducingness, this is by far the best group to listen to.   Big points to everyone for reading up on the Academic and External committee and coming to class knowing the answer. Extra points to Simms for picking up the microphone so that he didn’t have to slouch at the podium (Snow, Burns et al. take note!)

Board of Governors:

Why aren’t these people running the country?  They’re all so well-qualified and eloquent it makes me a little queasy.  Give me something to nitpick about, people!

Harris has commented many a time about how he was the President of “another institution” and he used to live in Antigonish…people can put two and two together Harris, why not just tell them that magical institution was St. FX?  Also, would it kill FPW or Horne to smile?  I know BoG is all serious and stuff, but come on.  Look at that, I totally found stuff to talk about.  Crisis averted.

There were general questions from the audience (which was quite full, actually.  Nice one) but I only half paid attention.  Bad pundit.  Lisa took better notes than I did.

• Today the excitement of the election took a back seat to the DSU Annual General Meeting. It was covered in depth here, before and during. Jen promoted it, then live-blogged it, Lisa twittered it, readers commented on it, and punditry.ca broke.  I won’t do a recap, but I highly recommend Jen’s liveblogging and the ensuing 97 comments.

• Kudos to Mat Brechtel, chair of Council and therefore chair of the AGM.  Managing debate and trying to maintain some amount of decorum in a highly-charged atmosphere is no small task.  Maybe for April 1 they can get you one of those classroom performance systems for vote recording.  I read on Lisa’s twitter that the “chair enters Council Chambers to thunderous applause from Council”, and that applause was well deserved.

• Apparently there was vandalism in the SUB during/after the AGM, along the lines of the DSU being fascist (unconfirmed reports).  The expectation of an organization that it take instruction from people who hate it and everything about it is something I suspect is unique to student associations.  Most people who hate a given organization just want said organization to leave them alone.  (e.g., people who hate the federal government want to be left alone to collect guns and hate black people).

• William Horne made an interesting point on his blog, saying “could be just the particular turnout last night, but it seems to me that Dalhousie students are far more polarized that I had previously realized”.  I reflected on that, then decided I disagreed.  Polarized in the context of politics means opposite ends of the political spectrum.  I’ll grant that the anti-war, anti-corporation, etc. viewpoints are near enough the polar end of the traditional “left-wing” side of politics.  But the right-wing-as-used-today view was not well-represented in that room.  If that room had elected a federal government, the Liberal party would look right-wing.  And I don’t know what Student Appreciation Nights are like these days, but even a small fraction of the ones in my day would convince you moral/family values aren’t at the top of the agenda of campus student leaders.  If anything, the polarity of DSU policies has shifted to the left in recent years.  Take a look at campaign material from 2005 and tell me how many times you use the word “sustainbility”. 
    The other use of polarized is to take opposite sides on an issue: pro-peanuts, anti-peanuts.  Taking for example an anti-war motion, those who opposed it at the AGM aren’t saying “war is awesome”.  They are saying, for example, “war sucks, but it’s pretty far out of our mandate as a student union”.
    I also think it probably WAS the particular turnout; the “people who came to the AGM in support of a particular agenda (be it *for* or *against* the motions)” demographic are a terrible sample set of Dal students.  It’s hard to be polarized when you don’t care.
    Though I disagreed in the end, Horne asked a good question that inspired thought, and I appreciate that.

• One interesting indirect outcome of the AGM is a petition aimed at taking away NSPIRG’s funding, promoted on a new website, www.stopnspirg.org.

• Debogorski was levied two fines tonight, for asserting/implying that people were Nazis.  One was out loud during the AGM, and the other was on punditry.ca after he was removed from the SUB by the police.

• Ok, that’s it for the AGM.

• You might have missed it in the AGM excitement, but candidate posters are available online, though the conversation seems to have boiled down to AmIHotOrNot.

• Sexton debate coverage is not up to Lisa’s level, but I do want to follow-up on last night’s wrap-up.  I congratulated Simms on finding answers to a question he hadn’t been able to answer at the Carleton debate, and said I suspected Evans & Blake could do the same.  The results are in: Evans nailed it, Simms was shaky but got the gist of it, and Glenn Blake didn’t know much more but still wanted to learn.  Two out of three ain’t bad, and Blake will have another shot at demonstrating this willingness to learn at the Thursday debate  (SUB, noon).

• I’ve tried to keep this locked up, but the rage is just too much.  I have a weakness: I cannot read text without spotting most spelling and grammar errors.  This makes my thrice-daily rounds of candidate websites extraordinarily painful.  Forget knowing how to spell, and a typo is a typo, but when did we stop teaching people how to use a spell checker?  If you can’t spell and you don’t have a web browser that spell checks as you type, get one.  Surely you all have noticed this as well:

Edgar Burns: “I Belive they would be well attended … If u have any others then please feel free to email…”
Rob LeForte escapes my wrath, but he also has been writing less than the other candidates.

Shannon Zimmerman: “This is more then just better communication” is fairly prominent, but not bad.
Eric Snow: “encouraged to see so many Sexton students ask very thought prevoking question”, but generally not bad or at least quickly corrected.
Gregory Debogorski: … I don’t need to present evidence here, right?

Hobbs: “maitenance”, “simple terms that is”, “debate on the much contentious issue”, “Studly debate”
Craig Jennex escapes my wrath, plus gets bonus points for spelling “camaraderie” correctly.

• Most candidates have Facebook groups to which they’ve invited all and sundry.  I wrote a little script, as I am prone to do, and it tells me how many members are in each group:

• punditry.ca served an astounding 6,000 pages to 550 unique visitors today.

• Yesterday I was impressed with 53 comments; the total as of midnight-ish was 240 comments.

This is it. The big stage.  Punditry.ca.

Please pardon any formatting errors as I’m new to this blogging business. Hopefully there’s nothing too unreadable about the following!

 I hit the ground running today, determined to earn my place on this panel alongside so many DSU luminaries. Between 11:30 and 2:00, I walked from building to building, from Studley to Sexton, keen to report the sights and sounds of the election fever that I was sure had swept all three campuses. I marched until the backs of my feet were grated down to two flaps of bloody, mangled skin, driving myself onwards by repeating the mantra that no sacrifice was too great in the quest to witness democracy in its purest form. What inspiring acts of candidate outreach did I see over the course of this epic journey?

1)      Mark Hobbs reading the student pulse in the Killam food court.

2)       Shannon Zimmerman making a screaming retreat from the black hole of student interest that is Carleton campus.

 

…like the fearsome crocodile, he clearly believes in biding his time, feigning catatonia, and waiting for the opportune moment to deliver a fatal strike.

 

All in all, I had a great time meeting and greeting the candidates. I probably would have hung out with them all afternoon, but Mark Coffin started to do that whole “manifesting into a demon and bending the space-time continuum in the process” thing again, so I figured that I’d better catch a bus before things got ugly. 

 

Edgar Burns spelled ANSSA “ANNSA” three times on his website, thus undoing the seal that normally binds the ancient evil within Mark Coffin.

I’m looking forward to the first debate tomorrow, and wish all of the candidates the best of luck!

Instead of studying the title subject any further, I’ve decided to dedicate my next few minutes to sharing my thoughts on day one of the DSU elections. I hope you realize I’m sacrificing my grades to provide you with invaluable commentary on the democratic process. 

On Web Presence

I spoke with many candidates before the election, and my advice to all of them was to have a top-notch website that is easily accessible and user friendly.  Yet, only five of the sixteen candidates have bothered to register a domain name, and many don’t even have blogs. Janet, Shane, Gregg and Glenn don’t have even facebook groups yet! I tried to get on to Hobbs’ website,  but it asked me for a password. I tried logging in with my dal netID… no dice. 

(Taking a page from my fellow panelist and fellow caper’s book) 

To Candidates: Make an informative website. Getting a domain name is relatively cheap, and the DSU reimburses your expenses if you make almost the tiniest effort. Also, it doesn’t hurt to run a spell check on your website. Call me a prude, but if you can’t stupid-proof your own campaign materials, I don’t want you signing letters to public officials on behalf of myself and the other 16499 students at Dal. 

To Voters: If the candidate you are considering voting for hasn’t taken the time to communicate their platform to you on the easiest information sharing medium there is, how well do you think they will communicate with you after you’ve given them a 1 – 2 year leash.  

—

On Senate 

Todays senate meeting was a short and quick one. I was impressed at the eagerness of senate and VP ED candidates that showed up. Robert, Edgar, Meredith, and Shane all showed up. Eric was the only presidential candidate present. There was a report from the Senate Governance committee, and although the committee chair was absent, Mr. Snow stepped up and essentially filled in for Dr. Butler in answering questions that senate had on the report.  I may be mistaken, but I think I may have seen some of the Senate ladies batting their eyelashes at Mr. Snow. 

On Wasting Tax Dollars 

On a side note, Industry Minister Tony Clement visited Dalhousie today for a “major government announcement”. Prior to his visit, it appeared that there was no indication to anyone below VP at Dalhousie as to what the announcement would entail. Immediately after his visit, it appeared there was no indication to anyone at all why the minister flew in from Ottawa. He simply dropped in to reannounce the fact that the government had allocated upwards of $2.0 Billion for infrastructure in the Federal Budget. As only Senate members were invited to this announcement, Eric was the only candidate present.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

I can’t tell you all how excited I am to be part of such a stellar team of DSU pundits. This really brings election geekery to a whole new level and I love it.

The official list of candidates has some familiar faces and some ones that this old hack doesn’t recognize. Mike gave a good overview, so I won’t rehash it all but just a few more thoughts.

Debo is back! Man, you have to admire that guy’s tenacity. He recently found my blog post from two elections ago where I inquired as to whether his youtube video was encouraging me to vote for him or let him out on a day pass. I also asked him to stop his ill planned act of shit disturbing. His response was thus:

I was just browsing the internet; after hearing rumours from a colleague of this post I cannot help but giggle on discovering it. I find your abrasive comment quite humorous in the context of current affairs within the DSU. I love it when personal aversion of the truth leads people to hatred of those whom promote it.
If I could procure “a day pass” for the entire Union to egress from the administrative insanity occurring within our Union I would.
Criticizing our Union for disenfranchising students and providing good times for the DSU “in crowd” never equates to an “annoying act of ill planned shit disturbing.”
I can only hope that the author of this post will revisit their opinions when considering future political activities and comments.
The Union should operate under the following principle:
Each according to their need; each according to their work!!!
I shall leave up to the reader to interpret its meaning.

I no longer think Debo is an ill planned shit disturber. I think he genuinely cares about students and the union. I do not, however, think he has a clue about the big picture or how to actually, realistically go about serving students. Regardless, his addition to the field should make for some fantastic entertainment.

The VP Education field (one that is close to my heart) only has one candidate I recognize, LeForte. From what I know of him, he seems genuinely interested in the issues and has kept very well abreast of the PSE goings on, even before the election started. He has on occasion asked me questions that have left me stumped and needing to do some research. This is a good thing. I hope to be able to form an opinion on Burns soon.

Internal is also one where my knowledge of candidates is lopsided. I have worked with Jennex on various projects and know him to be very dedicated, organized and good at what he does. He also has a very good grasp on union goings on, which comes from being an employee for the past couple of years. I don’t know anything about Hobbs except that he was the communications commissioner, which is a good start (for him, not me…well I suppose me too). We shall see how this one unfolds.

When did a BoG seat become the new hot item?! Whatever it was that sparked this little trend, I’m glad of it. The field is also amazingly solid. Conrad is a familiar face around the council table and has always impressed me with her maturity and her zealousness in advocating for the students on Sexton. Rai has been very committed to the Dal Debate Society, Sodales, and as a result became very involved during the society review overhaul. Harris is a med student who was the President of the St. FX Student Union in his previous life. He thus already has a lot experience in this type of role, especially coming from X where their union has a very close working relationship with the administration. Welch is the current law rep on the DSU and on the Law Student Society Board. Anyone who has had to work with the law school administration will find the university’s administration a cake walk. I sadly know nothing about Horne.

Senate is yes/no this year. Sad making. I have worked with Evans, she is solid. Like Mike says, though, unless someone unleashes the crazy this will be a bit of a yawn race.

I’ll update my bio soon, so you all know who the crazy ranting lady is.

(Candidates, campaigning starts tomorrow – don’t be shy, send us your news, pictures, URLs, whatnot. )

(By the way, did anybody else notice the new appearance on the Gazette website? I sure did.  Sadly, it broke the search feature, so you can’t search by author anymore…)

The official list of candidates is out, and matches the unofficial list below.  Now that the names are official, as is my tradition I offer  my initial thoughts on the races, using notes from last Wednesday:

One three-way race, one yes/no vote, and two pair-wise competitions for the executive slots (kind of makes preferential balloting seem like a waste…). A lot of strong-on-paper candidates should be enough to make the races interesting, and if that weren’t enough perennial candidate Debogorski is here to guarantee it.

Snow and Zimmerman are both DSU stalwarts with long resumes. Snow knows the constitution better than I do, and Zimmerman has so much DSU experience her time on Council almost overlaps with mine. Debogorski has picked up a lot during his two campaigns and continues to question … everything.   Say what you want about his rants, the guy went back for seconds when they were passing out “determination” (or stubbornness, whatever).  If you’ve been watching, you’ve seen him attend Council and write for the Gazette.  

If you’ve seen Debogorski campaign, you know he doesn’t want to win so much as he wants his issues discussed, a goal he has thus far achieved to some degree.  The race IS winnable to a third candidate, despite the iron-clad credentials of Snow and Zimmerman.  However, given the campaigns he’s run thus far, it won’t be him.  (What would a winning third candidate need to do?  1. Jack up voter turnout, 2) sweep the non-DSU-types vote, 3) polarize the DSU, forcing them to not just choose between Zimmerman and Snow, but to actively dislike whomever they are not choosing.  This last part is the hardest, but is needed because with a preferential ballot, in order to split a three-way vote you need the demographic you are splitting to rank one first and the other last, with you in the middle.  Prayer / animal sacrifice / sale of ones soul would also be useful tactics).

But I digress.

Kris Osmond is the incumbent for VP SL, and the only candidate this year. Normally candidates spring up from the woodwork for this position, but apparently not this year. (Historical note: the last VP SL to run again was Mark Szepes, who ended up a distant third in his three-way race in 2005). I’ve heard rumours from one group who wants a No vote, but unless they run a campaign this race is basically already over.

VP Internal… the current communications commissioner Mark Hobbs faces the “friendly & familiar” Craig Jennex. (DSU lifers will recall Craig as a long-time member of the Elections committee and a Infodesker who has been given tenure.) I don’t have a clear read on this one.

VP Education, Edgar Burns and Rob LeForte. I think and feel nothing. I know nothing about these guys other than what I’ve learned since I heard they were candidates.

Senate is three yes/no votes, so that’ll be like watching dull gray paint dry on the side of a barge (unless one of the candidates lets the Crazy out, which is never out of the question.  Remember LoRusso?  He lost his shit to a point where he was fined for it, and it was wildly entertaining.  You’re welcome.)

But Board of Governors! 5 candidates (down from 6) are jousting for 2 seats. I’ll look forward to that. With a law student, med student, and engineering student on the roster, we’re seeing candidates from demographics that don’t frequently run, which pleases me.  

It’s going to be a good time, and we’ll follow it all right here as it happens.