When I look back at the pictures of myself during the elections in 2008 I notice that I have a manic grin on my face in nearly every photo. I think I was convinced that if I didn’t smile the whole time and seem like I was enjoying myself people would think I couldn’t handle the pressure or my opponent would think they were getting to me or something. In reality people probably just thought I was mental. That’s just symptomatic of the insanity and paranoia that results from the psychological warfare and exhaustion of running for election.
It’s unsurprising that people go a bit clownish during those two weeks as Trinity’s elections are a bit of a circus. The colour and quantity of t-shirts is more important than the ability to coherently describe on an A4 page what you would do if elected and election gimmicks have supplanted policies. I must admit I was just as guilty of the above as everyone else: I had a massive overdraft, a massive moustache and my mom campaigning in the arts block for me (I’m convinced she won me at least 150 votes).
If I could change how the elections were run then, I would have relaxed the rules on campaigning a lot and make the financial rules a lot stricter.
It’s ludicrous that you’re allowed spend something like €600, but you can’t use your social advantages to campaign. You can buy 150 t-shirts, but you can’t be endorsed by a club or society. To me that’s a bit mercenary.
Most of the 10 days of that election campaign have blurred into a single generic day in my memory:
Up at 7.30, throw on the least smelly t-shirt available. Wake up campaign manager and other candidate sleeping on my floor.
Inhale some Weetabix, throw some manifestos and flyers into a bag, jog over to Zumo for a smoothie with guarana and back onto campus in time for a 9am lecture in the east end.
Scour the social spaces in college looking for students to annoy, return to one of the main teaching centres at 5 to every hour to squeeze in as many lecture addresses as possible. Power nap, quick sanger and out to whatever night was on to pretend to get drunk and lobby people to get their mates to vote for me. Home by 1. Repeat.
It was definitely worth it for me come count-night, but like most candidates I realised eventually that being a sabbatical officer is nothing like I thought it was going to be. A quick flick back through manifestos over the past four or five years will tell you this. How many on-campus off-licenses are TCD students owed? How much time should sabbats have spent running clinics in the Hamilton and D’Olier Street? The simple fact is that when elected, people realise that there’s an organisation to run with severe consequences for buggering it up and rules in which it has to operate.
