No – Officer hopefuls presented empty promises.
In a few months’ time, I’ll be voting in the General Election. But should I cast a vote in the elections that are currently suffocating our Union with harassing individuals in grimy t-shirts?
The nominees are doing very well to ensure they’re in your face 24/7, but I’ve never seen these hopefuls before in my life. The campaign posters are littered with their past experience, but still they are unrecognisable to me.
Perhaps this is because I’ve only been in the building since September. But it does conclude that a large majority of the votes will be on grounds of popularity. Not good at all.
And informing me you were on the History Committee just tells me you once organised a bar crawl. So did Carnage UK, but would you put them in a position of responsibility?
What do the jobs they’re campaigning for entail? I’m sure it’s something very important, but I don’t know.
And given the rather vague promises of the majority of our nominees (‘encouraging, continuing and ensuring’), neither do they.
So why apply for a job you don’t know owt about?
All I know is that Officers can help me with problems. Great, but there’s a counselling service, ACS, a Student Advice Centre and other professional options I would rather speak to, should I need to.
And do these potential officers really have your interests and wants at heart? It seems some Union Officers would sooner protect their friends than someone who voiced reasonable concerns.
When a student criticised the Welfare Committee’s ‘Sexy Week’ campaign, the vice-chair launched a series of unprofessional comments, including the authoritarian line “I am not answerable to you”.
She was subsequently defended by the Union. Was I wrong to think the customer is always right?
Authoritarian is exactly how I perceive anyone who wishes to become Union President. What must be going on through your mind to think ‘I don’t want to be anything other than the leader of this union?’
I know one Stalinist so-and-so who, right from secondary school, has expressed his desire to become Union President so it makes him more likely to become Labour Party leader.
Power and prosperity is all he craves, not your interests. If you’re not with him or ‘his people’, you’re against him. He won’t be successful though. You’ll be intelligent enough to see past his fake persona in a few years’ time.
As for the other candidates, well, good luck to you all. But I’m not convinced I would’ve got anything out of voting.
True, I won’t be able to moan if the Union goes wrong. But every serious candidate wanted the same outcomes. And that leads me to think, why did they not bring such issues up with the Union Officers in the past?
So it doesn’t matter if you voted for ‘a’ or ‘b’, the result is the same. A democracy this isn’t.
As one candidate insisted, ‘Don’t vote for Raj’. Trust me, I didn’t. And I didn’t vote for anyone else either.
Thomas Booker
Related posts: