And finally the healing can begin
Brain meltdowns are always rather embarrassing. Thankfully nobody else was home. But now it’s time to move on. I am very excited to have a job with Syncrude for the summer as a heavy equipment operator. This will be the most important educational experience of my life to this point. Also, I’ll make going there a roadtrip on my motocycle, which will be awesome. I can visit my grandmother in Edmonton, and learn how to make delicious pies. I might even learn something about mining! But mostly pies (I kid, I kid).
With the most immediate task of searching for a summer job now behind me, I can concentrate once again on my extra-curricular activities. Unfortunately, I have once again engaged in more than I can handle. Swimming and weight training will be joined by yoga and rock climbing on the physical side of things, and on the mental/community involvement Mining Games is being joined, at least temporarily, by running for the UBC Board of Governors in our yearly student elections. I am spending this weekend at Whistler, and next weekend taking a First Aid course (which I am really looking forward to). Where does the time go! Well, on occasion, to blogging.
First rant - student government at UBC. The depressing statistic about the yearly event of the AMS (Alma Mater Society, our resident bunch of wannabe-politician students) elections is that fewer than 10% of the student population actually votes. The more depressing thing is that my roommate, who is a political science major, does not seem to think that this is a problem, and from what I have seen, her attitude is representative of the attitude of the rest of her peers. In other words, the people who care the most about student government, and who care the most about the election, and who actually participate in the election, be it as candidates or as voters, don’t give a shit that nobody else votes.
In other other words, the entire agenda of the AMS is set by a group of people who make up fewer than 5% (assuming the winners get 50% of the vote, which never even happens) of the student body, a group of people who don’t even care what everyone else (95% of the students) even thinks!
To me, that is a complete and utter joke.
Admittedly, I am running this year. However, I am running as a joke candidate - that is, my “policies” are ridiculous, and I am not expected to win. Joke candidates are a regular feature of AMS elections - this year marks, I believe, the third or fourth year we have had a fire hydrant running for an executive position. A couple years back, the hydrant came within less than ten votes of winning. Obviously students cannot be expected to take such a process seriously. However, I personally would vote for the hydrant - it cares about the same issues that I do as a voter, which is to say, it doesn’t care about the AMS. It’s a friggin’ fire hydrant. Sure, it doesn’t care about anything - but then, the candidates it opposes all care about a variety of issues which I don’t think we should be wasting students’ money on. The hydrant does less damage.
Essentially, the goal of my “campaign,” which got off to a rocky start when I missed a debate thanks to the time being miscommunicated, is to appeal to the vast silent majority by being more apathetic, and more outwardly hostile, towards the current form of our student government than even they are. It’s an essentially impossible goal (and some people have taken issue with my joke stance to remove a certain busstop). However, I do not believe that it should be the right of 10% of students to decide, among themselves, which things every student must be concerned about, and THEN, to make matters worse, decide what action should be taken on every students’ behalf.
Democracy has never been about getting people the candidates consider to be “ill-informed” to not vote. The very notion is completely ridiculous - who would decide who is “ill-informed”? The point of democracy is to put someone capable into office - but someone who is capable and is also willing to follow a mandate as given by their constituents. Heck, it’s not even that - at its purest form, democracy is simply a massive popularity contest. It doesn’t even matter if you have no practical skills whatsoever (this is where I cannot, as a true Canadian, resist taking a dig at Bush Jr. - the man has people skills, I’ll give him that).
Essentially I am arguing that, if the AMS is only attracting 10% of the voters, all of its energy should be spent on raising that number. It doesn’t matter if they [the members of the AMS government] end up discussing issues that THEY don’t feel are important, because that is NOT why they are there. Unfortunately, because the only people who vote are the people whose elitist mindset keeps the AMS from being relevant to the entire student body, and even if I had the time to address a classroom or two every hour I doubt I could get enough votes to win, it is highly probably that I will lose my election, and further that our student government will continue its pointless march in obscurity.
At least they don’t waste MUCH money.
And now I have forgotten what my second rant was. I’m afraid I’ll just have to write it down when I remember it, and save it for next week.
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