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The Cynic: The latest on how U of T Admin is screwing you

The issue:

With both UTSU and Governing Council’s holding upcoming elections the campus is alive with… well nothing special really. Barring any political miracles, the elections will likely garner little attention from the student body and even fewer votes cast. This phenomenon of non-voting is nothing unique to U of T, but it’s especially disappointing and alarming to find this level of political disinterest at a university housed in the midst of one of Canada’s most diverse and thriving political centers. So why the lack of enthusiasm about casting a ballot that will make or break the dream of an aspiring U of T politico?

The spiel:

“U of T students just don’t care, and even if they did they’re too stupid to deserve a vote. They furrow their brows in a desperate effort to understand, but alas, to no avail. Their feeble minds can barely grasp the complexities of the matters put before them. Really, their brain power is pretty pathetic. Their comprehension may also be affected by the trace amounts of arsenic and mercury we slip into the U of T water supply. We are their overlords.” - The Cynic impersonating U of T Admin

The screw-job:

The lack of political motivation among students can easily be chalked up to youth apathy, plain and simple. Young people don’t vote, right, so who cares? If young people voted then Bush wouldn’t have made it to a second term. Shit, if youths voted American Idol’s Stephen Hung of “She bangs” fame might be Prime Minister of the United MTV Emirates for all we know.

But the powers that be have done little to none of the essential tasks involved in getting voter turnout up. A search of the U of T website reveals precious few morsels of information about the upcoming elections. The UTSU site has a cursory elections page with a couple downloadable PDFs, some contact emails and listings of dates and positions. No platforms, no clearly presented instructions on voting and not even a list of voting booth locations. This use of webspace is so egregious that it amounts to more than simple neglect. The administration is not doing their basic duty to ensure that information on the election is accessible to those who want it, much less those who need some encouragement.

Rather than making an uninformed choice, many students will make no choice at all. No one expects that the Admin orchestrate a Russell Simmons style Rock the Vote extravaganza. But without even a basic voter information campaign students might get the crazy idea that no one cares if they vote, or worse, that it doesn’t matter how they vote anyway. Ultimately, to garner attention the elections must be part of a comprehensive governance structure that gives these elected representatives a real voice in what happens. With the Admin constantly undermining student government and actively co-opting student leaders, the process of electing student representatives has a major element of futility. Perhaps it’s more pertinent to reverse the question: Why vote at all?

So how about it BlogUT? Why vote in the upcoming UTSU elections?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 1:29 am and is filed under On Campus, The Cynic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.