Spring Break
Ignorance may define elections
Tara Duffy
Issue date: 4/16/08 Section: Opinion
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In the two years that I have gone to SJSU, I have never really given any thought to it - not because I don't care, but I have just never seen or heard anything about A.S. that would call my attention to it or anything that is affiliated with it.
An election is going on right now to determine who will represent A.S. for the Fall semester. I have seen a few people walking around with "vote for so-and-so" T-shirts. I thought it might have something to do with it. I haven't seen anyone's faces plastered on walls, or any dates of when the actual voting for this election will take place. I haven't read any descriptions around this campus - aside from the Spartan Daily - of which positions need to be filled or what those positions actually entail.
For the majority of my time at SJSU, just like over 27,000 of my peers, according to Transportation Solutions, a University-based commuter service organization, I was a commuter student.
During that time, I had three objectives: Get to school, get through my classes and get on the road before rush hour hit. I didn't have time to be worried about things that were happening at school.
Now that I live closer to school and spend a considerably larger amount of time on campus, I still don't know much about the student government or what it does here. I am also a transfer student, which I believe has made me even less informed of what has been happening on campus - at least less informed than someone who had been going to SJSU right out of the gate.
I attended a short A.S. election meeting for this very newspaper a few weeks ago. The candidates spoke about themselves and why they deserve to fill whichever positions they were running for, and then they answered a few questions from the group of about 30 students who had shown up to see what they had to say.
As I looked around, I noticed that most of these people seemed to be all friends with each other and friends of the candidates. I became even more disinterested in the whole situation.
I also noticed that most of the crowd was wearing some sort of symbol from various fraternities or sororities. So apparently someone is getting the word out about the A.S. elections. This might have something to do with the fact that most of the candidates who are running for a position in A.S. identify themselves as belonging to the Greek system.
So, I think the challenge is figuring out a way of getting the word out to other students and informing them about issues that affect this campus.
During the short gathering that I attended, there was much talk about apathy - that students didn't care enough to get involved with issues on campus. Are students apathetic, or is it just a lack of available information?
I hear that some of the issues on the line at SJSU this coming year are big ones. I guess we will just have to take it upon ourselves to find out what they are.
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