TSG’s campaigning season should be longer and more visible.
Much like the selection of Temple’s 10th president, the election of the next Temple Student Government student body president and his or her cabinet has been absent from the minds of students. In the weeks leading up to the official announcement of the campaigning tickets, made last night, March 19, there has been virtually no word or hype for the elections.
More importantly, campaign season begins too close to when it ends. Candidates for TSG positions should be made known at least a full month before students are expected to vote. With a history of low turnout at the polls, TSG and its election officials should be more cognizant of the time they must devote to mobilizing students to even care about elections.
As the Occupy movement has garnered a small but strong force on Main Campus this academic year, one thing it has made clear is that students want representation. The often sole student voice in private talks at the university is TSG student body President Colin Saltry. Whether it be at Board of Trustees committee meetings or on the presidential search committee, the student-body president is typically representing the more than 36,000 students that attend Temple. Decisions made in these bodies affect both undergraduate and graduate students, full-time and part-time.
It’s for this reason, more than any other, that students need to take the election of their next representative seriously. But it’s hard to expect that when the elections themselves appear impromptu.
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