On being assaulted by hand-flyers: Spring and Student Elections at KU.

We have three student coalitions this year running for student body president/vice-president. Not a single one of them matters all that much to me, a characteristic I'm sure I share with approximately 99.184% of the enrolled students here. That being said, I did make a very conscious effort to keep up with the goings-on in the UDK and I looked over each coalitions' platforms to make a judgment as to which one was both necessary and doable.

Of the three, Delta Force seems the strongest, which surprises me after last year; I didn't think they'd be competitive anymore after what should have been a clear win for them. On the contrary, it now seems as if it is KUnited that is struggling; but for institutional support (ie: the Greeks and I would suspect many of the SILC clubs), I can't see them existing for much longer. They seem exhausted in their ideas, running simply on the implied message of 'Hey we've been in power for so long, we know all of these people, you wouldn't want to stop us now.' It is sickening how many of the ideas they claim on their platform will be done anyway, regardless of which coalition wins.

Delta Force, meanwhile, at least as long as I've been following, continues to please in their platforms; no it may not be as antagonistic towards the administration as one would like, but the platform is geared towards students and perhaps at this point in time that's what is needed most: after (hopefully) a couple years in power than DF can start affecting larger campus institutions.

The third coalition is not worthy of our time. I have no animosity towards anybody from Student Voice, and I am happy for the workings of democracy to allow for third parties. But they ran an freshman senator – who was expelled from the Senate two weeks ago for excessive absences – as their presidential candidate. They deserve as much ridicule as possible to be heaped on them after this election is over.

So we're now in the middle of the second day of the election and this is the first year without physical, exclusive polling places as all balloting is now done online from any computer. I do hope this dramatically increases the number of ballots as last year's turnout was beyond pitiful for a campus of at least 24,000 students. However, without that polling place on Wescoe Beach, there is no magnet to keep all of the activists from the parties close by; you could somewhat avoid getting bombarded with multi-colored handsheets and having people walk you to class if you simply stayed off the top of the Hill. But now they're everywhere and anywhere, and between them and the Red Cross mascot and the guys on their cycles to nowhere, it's starting to feel like a circus up there on the Hill. If only it wasn't all for naught.