punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

• 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.

I’ll be away tonight, as it is my girlfriend’s birthday, but let me just say that if this whole student politics thing doesn’t work out, the Board of Governors candidates could always take the Halifax music scene by storm as the next big indie band. 

Tell me you can’t see this as a Gazette cover.

I ventured into the SUB at around 1:00 this afternoon on my way to the DalOUT office. I was there until 3:00 and I didn’t even make it to the staircase. I sat down on one of the couches to have a gander at what the candidates came up with for their posters. Within mere moments, I was chatting with Matt Golding [current VP (Finance & Operations)] about the posters and the upcoming DSU Annual General Meeting, which, incidentally, should make this week an even bigger shit-show than it is normally. Following Matt’s visit, I had sightings of and, in a few cases, full-on conversations with Snow, Zimmerman, Debogorski, Jennex, LeForte, Burns, fellow pundits Coffin and shutter-bug Hillman, and CRO Amyotte.

My advice to pundits and others interested in talking to or overhearing candidates: Hang out in the SUB lobby. I swear, there is some sort of homing signal.

My advice to candidates: For your own health and well-being, stay out of the SUB! Unless you’re using the time to talk to people who don’t already know you, it will just wear on you. Also, don’t think that being overly nice to the pundits will get you into our good graces. What will get you into my good graces is permission to cut you to pieces with wit (thanks, Craig).

On that note…

This year’s posters, some of which require a more dedicated viewing than I alloted them today, are what I would call generally adequate. Snow has re-used his photo from last year’s Senate campaign (fine, I guess, since his physical appearance hasn’t changed drastically). Zimmerman’s is clean and simple. Debogorski’s manifesto is much more succinct than last year’s, and has far fewer grammatical errors, but a whopping three mentions of food service. Also, I was left with the distinct impression that I, as what others would deem a “DSU Insider”, apparently “rule” the DSU. To which I ask, “Where’s my coronation?!”

On the BoG front, Harris and Rai opted for the “too much information” approach. Both have posters littered with photos, words and graphs (of all things). Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered to get up from the couch in order to get close enough to read them. That will have to wait until tomorrow. Conrad, FPW, and Horne are relying more on their good looks, which is valid given that it’s BoG, so a higher percentage of people will likely vote on a “(s)he’s hot” basis, and all three are good-looking. Honestly, ever since FPW wore his job interview suit to a Council meeting, the girls have been crazy for him. The general response to his poster, however, is the question, “Is he Spanish?” (Answer: He is not) given the red-yellow-red horizontal stripes. Worldly as he is, Fred is aware of the resemblance and explained to me that, as I suspected, he was just going for two colours that attract the eye, and he has succeeded in that regard.

Hobbs’ and Simms’ posters use a similar distillation/contrast(?) (some photo editing technique for which I’m sure I don’t know the correct term). Jennex highlights, through pictures, his “in the field” involvement with the Union.

I think we’re in for an interesting and entertaining week, folks. I look forward to reading the comments of my fellow pundits and our gentle readers.