Another year of campaigning is over. SGA has announced the new president and executive board members.
Buddy Clements of the Distance Party was elected president. We endorsed him last week, for what it’s worth.
While we are happy that, in our collective opinion, the better candidate won, we hope this year’s elections start a new trend in campaigning though.
We hope the newly elected officials actually follow through on the campaign promises that got them elected into office in the first place.
This has been the biggest issue with politics ever since democracy existed — empty promises.
It is why politicians have reputations of being liars and crooks.
We hope this group doesn’t fall victim to that stereotype.
While we’re happy the Distance Party pulled through, we’re still skeptical of them.
After all, we have been disappointed by SGA in the past due to a lack of them doing anything of importance for the campus.
Not to say previous SGA representatives are liars and crooks. That’s simply harsh. But many years have seen very little progress happen other than typical bureaucratic issues within SGA itself.
We don’t really care about how SGA organizes itself. We want to see things change that will benefit the campus. The things the Distance Party campaigned on.
There have been too many shortfalls in terms of seeing through the promises made during election season in the past.
Whatever the reason for this, we hope it won’t be an issue next year.
Unlike years past, each of the campaign promises seemed relatively achievable. There were no “wet campus” type of taunts to get students to vote for them.
This year’s campaigning seemed a little dry in comparison to years past, but we would actually rather have it that way.
The theatrics were missing but hopefully the content of the campaign won’t be.
Because both parties had good ideas. The Distance Party’s plans for better faculty relationships, a safer campus, better sustainability, and a better budgeting process were great ideas that shoud not be in any way hard to attain.
If they are not, it would be a major disappointment in another year of pointless SGA elections.
Each of those issues are of high importance to the community. While they are possible to fix, it will still take effort. We hope we see the effort next year.
This election should set in motion the trend of SGA making great leaps forward in terms of bettering the students’ lives here at SRU.
Because while it’s a nice little campus, we still have a lot of problems that need worked out. Worked out by the students with the power to do so.
