Bureaucratic Breakdown

Photo by John Nakano

The Spring’s race for undergraduate Student Body President and Executive Vice President has provided Tech with the opportunity to choose between two differently qualified tickets. While candidates every year align on major campus issues, it is leadership experience and ideology that make the 2013 tickets different.

Nick Picon and Lucy Tucker, who respectively serve as Undergraduate VP of Campus Affairs and VP of Academic Affairs, respectively, have a campaign built on deliverables. Based on their experience, Picon and Tucker have a strong understanding of the roles they are running for and SGA as an organization and a space for interfacing with students, administrators, and the state. However, despite a long list of completed and ongoing initiatives, the PiconTucker campaign doesn’t present an overarching mission that informs students of their intended approach to leadership and the unpredicatability of the jobs.

Max Tanski, currently a representative in UHR, and Lisandro Sagastume come from less of an SGA background, but their ticket provides a change of pace in our expectations of elections season and SGA’s purpose. Tanski and Sagastume are focused on engaging the student body better than SGA has in the past by hosting townhalls because they see their job as representing students. Yet, their platform is very high level, and the few tangibles they have are neither realistic, nor innovative, paths to engaging the student body and reflect on a misunderstanding of the roles they are running for.

On the whole, both campaigns seem to harp on what is wrong about Tech and SGA, but rarely focus on the potential of the Institute and the organization. The average student feels less empowered by negative undertones, and we hope that in the last days of the campaign, the tickets will focus on the positives about Tech.

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