uni politics

I hate politics. Really I do.

In an ideal world the people voted in would be the best for the job, period. And all decisions within the elected body would be decided by the equivalent of a conscience vote, ie everyone votes what they think is the best choice, none of this partisan crap.

Now I understand why this isn't the case for large-scale politics. No wait, that's a lie. I read at one point about why the partisanship in politics but the knowledge seems to have seeped out my ears in the meantime. I used to understand why large-scale politics doesn't function like this.

There's been a few elections at uni within the last month that I've been somewhat involved in. In one, one of the candidates put together a party while all the other candidates ran independently. There was open animosity between the leader of the party and most of the other candidates. The results of the election involved the entire party being elected. Is this a good thing? I don't think so. For one, this election saw much more campaigning (including smear campaigns) than usually goes on in student politics, and I don't think it's a good thing that this year's election might become the precedent for future years and lead to bitter rivalries between candidates. Up until this point I would have said that everyone in my faculty gets on fairly well. Well not anymore.. the leader of the group seems to be the George Bush of CSE politics in that everyone either loves him or hates him, with very few fence-sitters. It doesn't help that he ran a completely dishonest smear campaign against one of the groups who don't mind admitting they hate him. Yay for divisiveness. The other point about the entire party getting in is that by running a platform that filled every position they exclude the society from receiving any new blood. It's all very well that they're all good friends with eachother and so forth but it seems like they would have benefited more by deliberately leaving a couple of positions open for other people.

Then there's the other election, for a society made up of people who are all nice and friendly but with a whole lot of politicking going on under the surface. I know several people who have sent around emails or expressed out loud their hopes to be appointed to position X by the new exec next year, and people running for positions in the exec who have talked to as many voters as possible to try to influence their voting. Now this society is quite a large one which has a large operating budget every year, so it makes sense that this is a big deal and it's important to the people who care that the society be run with the 'right' people. But wherefore trying to make people's minds up for them? Talking about how a certain vote is going to be people S versus people T, and implying the existence of bloc voting? Sending emails to candidates for a position (not even voted in yet, just the candidates) to make sure you're the first to express interest in a certain position? That's just not cool.

I don't know precisely where I'm going with this; only it seems a shame that these societies, which both started out as a bunch of students just trying to help other students out and have a good time in the process have turned into this painful morass of hidden meanings and partisanship. Uni politics aren't supposed to be this deadly serious thing where you can make friends and enemies for life. Save that for the real world, if you care so much. I'm kinda glad I'm not part of either society at the moment, I'm too blunt and honest for all this politicking. Maybe I'll apply again next year and hope it's all settled down a bit by then. In the meantime, I want my innocence back :(