Election Watch: When Ian Stopped Caring
Well, tonight’s General Election debate was even more boring than the first. Attendance was down about 50% and there was noone advocating for riots in the streets. Worse yet, I didn’t have a chance to have a few drinks beforehand. So I basically listened to the two candidates tout their qualifications, brag about their accomplishments, and suck up to the OC and ODE. Not a pretty sight.
The OC digital recorder’s battery died after about twenty minutes, so I only have part of the VP portion of the debate. Trust me when I say that the audio isn’t worth listening to.
Thankfully there wasn’t anything particularly notable to report on– both of the Presidential candidates stuck to their talking points. Both agreed that viewpoint neutrality was crucial to the ASUO and Jared specifically stated that he does not want the ASUO to interfere in the operations of student publications. There was a bit of a point of contention over the issue of an Iran resolution (and other campus-unrelated resolutions.) Mann explicitly stated that he didn’t think the Senate should pass resolutions on such matters while Axelrod felt that if some students want the Senate to discuss the matter than they should do just that. He added that this particular issue (Iran) was indeed affecting some students, himself included.
The only good quotes of the night that I was able to jot down verbatim were part of an answer Todd Mann gave to a question about his ability to work within a bureaucracy like the ASUO. Mann responded that “we’ve built an amazing bureaucracy in the RHA” and had cut quite a bit of Housing’s red tape. If elected, he said, “we’re going to cut through the green tape notebook.”
Wish I had more, but there really weren’t many notable moments.
Anyways, enough for now. Our new photographer, Christin, was also at the debates and took some good pictures of the candidates. We’ll put ’em up tomorrow.
My favorite part was how every candidate pushed for getting more students to participate in their government, yet at the debate’s end, the audience was allowed to ask a whopping four questions before the debate (prematurely) concluded. Whether or not one thinks Alex Deley is a “doush”, his public debate suggestion was totally necessary.