The Daily O’Collegian

If a presidential candidate campaigns in the forest and no one cares, does it even matter?

Of course, I am not referring to presidential campaigns in the POTUS-sense. Ralph Nader gets air time and he could not win this election if Obama’s middle name was ‘Lucifer.’

No. I am referring to the oft ignored politics of SGA.

Believe it or not, SGA elections started Tuesday and extend into Wednesday at 5 p.m.

I, like most students, do not care about SGA elections. I have no idea who any of the candidates are. I have no idea what SGA even does; besides improve their resumes.

The only contact I have ever had with SGA was when Joe Saint John came to the arena to calm down the mob that was clamoring for Final Four tickets back when that was a real concern (I miss Tony Allen).

With that said, I have voted in every SGA election that I noticed. This may not be saying that much, because SGA election are easily missed when you spent most of your college career finagling your schedule to avoid classes on Mondays and Fridays. However, I liked voting in SGA elections.

This may seem like a paradox. How could I vote without knowing about the candidates? Well, when you do not care about the outcome it is easy. I just select the first option in every box. You are welcome, Lehenbauer/Wilcox, Michael Gumbs and ‘Tin’ (if you voted, you might get that).

After voting with absolutely no knowledge of any of the candidates, I thought it might be fun to look back and retroactively inform myself on my decision.

I went to each of the candidates Web sites. From this admittedly superficial experience, I liked my original uninformed choice.

The Lehenbauer/Wilcox home page picture featured the candidates on the climbing wall at the Colvin Center in their business attire.

If they can climb that wall in business attire, they deserve my vote. I get scared just looking at that thing through the glass as I walk past to go lose pick-up basketball games.

The Griffin/Andrews picture features the gentlemen just lazily standing in front of Edmon Low Library. People also frequently found in front of the Edmon Low Library? Hippies. We should check these guys for Frisbees before we trust them with their hands on the button; or is it the phone? Either way, no hippies.

In terms of real policies, the candidates are mostly similar. Although, their policies do diverge on the key issues. For example, Lehenbauer/Wilcox want to implement a monthly presidents’ round table meeting, whereas the Griffin/Andrews ticket plans to hold bi-monthly round table meetings.

Come on, guys. Twice a month? That is 12 extra meetings a year that absolutely no one cares about. What next, square tables? Advantage, Lehenbauer/Wilcox.

Being lazy (both as a student and a journalist) I did not read all of the campaign promises. After all, I am not a robot. However, I did take the time to count the promises. Based on this data, Griffin/Andrews hold a distinct advantage.

Their 25 proposals are head and shoulders above the measly eight bullet-points of the Lehenbauer/Wilcox campaign.

So you can find time to climb the rock wall, but do not have time to hastily brainstorm an extra 17 policy measures? Color me disappointed.

Based on this limited analysis, I think I can safely say that my original take on SGA elections holds true. I still do not care. Although, unlike before– I can now say that I appreciate the people that work hard for SGA.  Whether we care, they work hard at whatever it is they do. From this apathetic student to you, thanks SGA.