The UCCSU elections
It’s been an interesting few days in UCC which owing to illness (including an eye infection) I haven’t been around for. However, voting for the new Students Union which took place over the Tuesday and Wednesday has resulted in a man, who to put it mildly, is a fuckwit, getting the Presidency. A friend of mine described him thus:
”For Christ’s sake it’s like some nightmarish state where Mike Huckabee won the Republican primaries and has Ron Paul as his running mate”
Now, one of the interesting things about this particular candidate was that they ran on a very explicitly ‘anti-SU’ platform. Whether it was down to their mobilising of individuals or just that the amount of the candidates actually got people interested in the elections, for once the turnout was surprisingly high. Some 4000 up from 1400 last year. The person who won did so with only 135 votes so you can’t give them all the credit for the turnout.
To some extent, the candidate has proven their point which is that you can get people interested in the SU. However, their method of doing so was by saying ”it’ll be funny to fuck with the only body that actually represents students”. Also, they generally preyed on general student stupidity. Talking to a class of first years he said he would get 2€ vodka’s in the college bars. Given that these bars leak money as it is, how such a thing is possible is beyond me. Another promise of his was a 24/7 library. Talking to a guy in my class who seemed quite taken by this idea, I pointed out that it wasn’t like the previous SU’s had been not interested in such a policy and that such thing required massive problems with financing, contracts and unions. But hey, I’m just glad I won’t be in UCC next year…
Granted, he may have a point that the body could do more but how exactly you can do that while doing your job properly remains beyond me. For those people who follow student politics, UCC will be an interesting test case for the immediate future.