Thank God, the A.S. elections are over. Everything from the questionable Facebook content of A.J. Kuck to unethical electioneering made this year's election process a gruesome affair. These elections have become way too corrupt and sketchy.
Students have voiced similar concerns about the dirty campaign tactics and overall scandalous practices that come with electing a new board of people we, as a student body, don't actually seem to care about.
The Orion has received numerous concerns about the election and candidates in general and how unhappy students are with the way certain issues were handled.
The first fiasco of this election season was the unveiling of questionable racist content on presidential candidate A.J. Kuck's Facebook page. We were mostly just shocked that anyone running for office still had a public page in the first place. The story has more than 100 comments on The Orion's Web site, and people had plenty of opinions to share on the issue, mostly upset with the racist content.
Honestly, how many times, as college students, have we been told to lock Facebook pages down because possible employers, police and peers look judge us for what's on them? People were outraged, hurt and confused to find out about Kuck's content.
Kuck wasn't the only candidate to get on the students' bad side with horrible decision-making during crunch time. Both Kuck and Jeff Kell used chalking as a way of advertising their campaigns, but Kell went even further. His supporters actually made a point of going around and erasing Kuck's advertisement to chalk his own over top of them, even occasionally borrowing the "K" from "Kuck" to write "Kell."
The Orion received a letter to the editor from Chico resident Richard Taylor who spotted Kell's supporters chalking four intersections of the sidewalk. He was upset that, despite President Paul Zingg's statement that chalking on campus is vandalism, the supporters did not seem to care.
"I am upset political campaigning has come to this," Taylor said. "I know it is not new, I just haven't seen it so extensive and repeated."
One thing you could say about the process is that the candidates got really into it. Kell went as far as to get his grandmother out on campus, chasing down students to shove a flier in their hands and ask if they'd voted yet.
The T-shirts, tables, buttons, posters, chalking, talking to classes and organizations and debates all seemed like a little much for something most students don't actually vote in. Not to mention, write-in candidates for this election included Chuck Norris, Ron Paul, Rick Astley, Luke Skywalker, Jesus Christ and "anyone but this guy."
The student body really should pay more attention to who gets elected to what and when, but the simple fact of the matter is they don't. It's hard to blame them.
When you're constantly disappointed by the lack of professionalism your potential student government officers display, it's hard to rally behind them and get excited. A lot of these people ran uncontested, and even if they weren't, it by no means meant they were giving their all to show students how serious they were about the positions.
Julie Wright, who lost her bid to be re-elected as Executive Vice President, was giggling to herself and passing notes with A.J. Kuck during a press conference with The Orion. Really guys? Passing notes and writing your campaigns in chalk? No wonder nobody is excited to vote.
Even if we put all of that aside, there is still the fact that the candidates set up their own tables and laptops during open voting and tried to lure people to vote right there in the middle of campus.
This simply should not happen. If you're standing over someone's shoulder, who do you honestly think they'll vote for? And what if you bring them in by ordering some pizzas and teasing people with a free slice if they vote for you right there and then? There have even been rumors of a candidate offering to buy drinks at the bars for anyone who voted for them.
There should be a lot more care and attention paid to the idea of how we should allow these candidates to campaign, and how people should be allowed to vote. Candidates should not be allowed to chalk. They should not be allowed to electioneer, or bribe. And they should not be allowed to sign in to anyone else's portal account and vote for them - yes, it happens.
Believe it or not, we aren't in high school anymore. These people actually get paid between $9,000 and $12,000 to oversee the whopping $30 million A.S. budget. They have power and should be held accountable for the way they campaign. And even though electioneering and other questionable campaign tactics may not technically be illegal in student elections, they are in California, and they are still unethical.
A.S. should step up and try to solve the problem by creating a collective incentive to vote.
The Ultimate College Bowl was a nationwide effort to get students registered to vote in the U.S. presidential elections.
It offered a concert as the top prize and was extremely successful, with the top school, UC Santa Barbara, tallying 10,857 students registering during the event.
Someone in A.S. government should be responsible for fostering a healthy campaign, and if incentives are offered, they should be offered to everyone, not just those walking by a candidate booth loaded with pizza and laptops.
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