If one were to pick an organization on campus that affected his/her future the most, a logical choice would be the Student Government Association. It is a smart choice, since SGA is responsible, to some extent, for the funding of every registered club on campus, which enables that respective club to exist, which, in turn, affects the entire community’s future at Cabrini. On Friday, April 25, a large portion of the future for the 2003-04 academic year was decided with the executive board SGA elections, but fewer than 300 people, out of the entire student body, came out to vote.
This poor voter turnout can be attributed to a number of things, but the most pertinent would be the lack of advertisements and lack of platforms that SGA put out for the upcoming elections.
When a government election is around the corner, the respective candidates advertise relentlessly for the voting public to swing their way. This advertising campaign includes platforms, flyers, television spots and personal visits from the candidates. Very little of this advertising, if any, happened for this year’s executive board SGA elections.
Granted the SGA does not have the money the government candidates have, it does have the space and the means to advertise to its voting public.
The first problem is the lack of platforms to the voting population, especially from the presidential candidates. This problem can be attributed to the fact that the SGA platforms were due on Wednesday, April 16, which was the last day of classes before Easter Break. This left little time for the procrastinating candidates to put forth their platforms to the campus community. However, if they are taking on the responsibility of being the student’s voices at Cabrini, their thoughts, ideas and aspirations for the college community should have been in our faces well in advance of their deadline, instead of the day it was due. They should have taken the initiative and handed it in early and gotten it approved, so they could plaster their campaign where people would see it.
The second problem is the lack of catchy flyers and posters by the SGA advertising the election. There were flyers put up in the posting areas, but they were overshadowed by the other random and outdated flyers that surrounded them. A good majority of posters promoting the election was in the residence halls, which excluded the high number of commuter students on campus who do not frequent the halls.
SGA does a lot of things for the campus that many people do not know about and a major reason why that happens is because it does not promote its events like other organizations do. However, when it does advertise persistently, its events are extremely successful.
The SGA should advertise the campaign like it did for the winter formal and the Mr. and Mrs. Cabrini pageant. If you put two and two together, the reason the events were so successful was because the ads for the events were displayed everywhere you looked-in different sizes, shapes and forms-and they were displayed well in advance of the event. If the SGA took the advertisements and platforms for the elections as seriously as it did for the events it sponsors, it would have more than 300 people turn out to vote for its future members.
Posted to the web by Paul Williams.
