By Renan Dincer ‘16

On Wednesday I got an email from Abby Williams, the student government Representation Chair, set in a large font asking for me to vote for the Student Government representatives for next calendar year.

“EVERY DAY THAT YOU DON’T ANSWER THIS SURVEY, YOU GET A REMINDER EMAIL. Do your inbox a favor and just take a couple minutes to vote right now,” read the second paragraph of her email. A pretty rough threat from student government not only strongly urging me to vote for the upcoming elections but saying that they will send me spam for each day I don’t vote. I thought, maybe she thinks Lafayette students are incapable to use their right of representation and thus should be forced vote by constant stream of emails.

This is not the first time I’m getting a mind-numbingly large number of spam from Abby. Student government surveys sent by her have almost followed a trail of wrong-link corrections and “you still haven’t filled this out” emails.

By the time this gets published, the Student Government will probably have an enormous number of responses to the survey, and they will think that this was one of the most successful elections ever. But what we will notice sooner or later that nobody has spent time glancing over the candidate’s bios, how eager they are to work and what their plans are for the student body.

Is student government’s view of itself next year a room full of pretty faces? If it is, they are succeeding by bugging everyone to cast their vote as soon as possible without any research until they vote using a ballot that is quite similar to “Hot or Not.”

Does student government want actual representation of the student body on many functions of the school where the input of the student body is needed? I really would like the best candidates to manage the student government budget of $613,170 for 2,271 students (FY2013-14).

The student government should take a step back and let us see who’s running for what. Although the number of candidates from each class impresses me, it will definitely take me some time to read those bios.

Maybe student government thinks that nobody on campus cares about them and just wants to squeeze out a vote, which, in some cases, will always be true. Maybe it’s time to reconsider when the whole campus body should be emailed.

The writer is a junior and the assistant general manager of WJRH, the college’s radio station.