It’s always fun when a friend approaches you asking you to give the ‘these kids didn’t have it so good back in my day’ angle in a newspaper article. It’s even more fun when you’re only 23 and still in college. However, it is fair to say that the SU Sabbatical Elections have changed hugely in the time that I’ve been involved in them.
By way of introduction, I ran for Education Officer in 2006 and was, quite happily, successful. In fairness, I was practically unopposed. (My most threatening competitor was running on the mantle of launching the campanile into space!) Even though this was only four years ago, the methods of campaigning have changed a great deal in that time. Actually, it’s almost impossible to compare the process which I underwent to what the candidates of 2010 will take part in, in the coming weeks.
To try and conceptualise some of the differences, bear in mind that there were literally no Trinity students on Facebook in 2006. None. By the time you’ve read this article, you’ll probably have been invited to groups for at least five of the candidates. These will be used as information hubs for every campaign for the next fortnight. Allied to these will be flashy professionally designed websites which spew forth the already overly distributed policies of the candidates. During our election, my fellow candidates and I converted our Bebo pages (pause for nostalgia) as our election vehicles, using blogs as our method to communicate with the masses.
As Education Officer, I had to run the following year’s elections. In that year, we made some important changes which have influenced the way in which the elections have changed and expanded ever since. Before this, candidates had to produce single colour manifestos and posters, and were limited to fifty t-shirts per campaign. These rules were eliminated and provisions were made for election ‘stunts’. Now full colour posters and manifestos are the standard for every campaigner and you can be expected to see up to 160 people in t-shirts for some of this year’s campaigns.
Anyone who witnessed our 2006 elections and then saw Cathal Reilly’s presidential campaign of 2008 or Mick Birmingham’s of last year can see how much the methods of publicising the elections have changed in such a short time. More permissive rules and more accessible technology were feared by the Students’ Union for many years as it was worried that they would somehow “corrupt” the electoral process. However, the Union’s embracing of these has only served to democratize the election process and allow students to find out more about their future public servants. As long as candidates are able to use as many forms of communications as possible to show off their credentials, the competitive nature of the contest will constantly drive the candidates to build bigger teams, get better designs and create more innovative stunts. As annoying as this all may be to any student who’s just trying to get from A to B in the Arts Block, this drive is a good thing for the Union. As a result, I’m sure election turnout will rise again this year, as it has every year since 2006.
With all of these changes, it should be noted that the most important factors will never change. At the end of the elections, a massive pile of paper will be sorted, counted and transferred, and some old hack will read out a result. There will be tears and celebrations on the night, but these will follow two weeks of screaming campaigners, gnashing of teeth, barbed words and stabbed backs. Back in my day, we used to call the SU Elections ‘Trinity’s finest bloodsport’. Once the campaign gets going, I hope voters will understand why.
