APRIL 5, 2005
THE CADRE ¢ 13
OPINION & COMM!
Help Wanted
Jamie McGuigan Reporter
If you’ve walked around
campus lately you’ve probably noticed an abundance of bulletin board ads posted. They range from Student Union election ads to subletting apartments in Brown’s Court. Upon further investigation The Cadre noticed that some of the ads posted where strange, a little too honest, and just downright bizarre. Take a look at this examples and judge for yourselves:
Ads found around the different buildings on campus: _
Earn money acting as a stenograph during advanced philosophy courses, while I sleep
Must be neat and have a high tolerance for pain.
Contact SocratesRules@upei.ca WANTED:
Last Semester’s Chem 311 Tests and Assignments Must be over 80%, Will Exchange Academic Honesty And Pride
Contact: bondsfan02@upei.ca
Ads found inside The Wave: Female Seeking Male Partner Attractive female, looking for one-night stand with varsity athlete. No talent or starting position required.
References available at request
Contact superlush@upei.ca
_ Male Desperately Seeking Female
Intoxicated student, desperately seeking
female for a 2am love session.
Looks not required, experience and low standards a must.
Contact: drunkNhorny@upei.ca Outside the Cadre Office Needed: Reporters
No wit, talent, or sense of humor required.
Must be able to bore student body and ramble about
unimportant issues.
Poor grammar needed, as _well as lack of common sense.
Contact: upeicadre@gmail.com
ANTARY
SU PREZ Threatens Council to Ratify Elections to Avoid Stress during Exams
Student Council Ratifies Controversial Election without Sufficient Debate
Matt Campbell a Editorial fe : Now, you would think that if one hundred and six students signed a petition with a one-week deadline stating that there may have been substantial errors in the online election ballot resulting in grounds for a re vote for executive VP, the Student Union would immediately take the petition into consideration when deciding whether or not to ratify the recent elections.
Somehow, this was not the case. Tuesday, March 29" 2005 UPEISU’s Student Council voted to ratify the elections for the controversial 2005 election. The beginning of the meeting heard Brad Deighan explain his case. Deighan claimed that since electronic errors were made, and since the results were very close, that the errors could have changed the result of the executive VP position.
Councillors debated whether there were problems or not, and if that would have played a significant effect on the vote.
Overall, debate on the topic was surprisingly poor. Most councillors were either misinformed, lacked interest in the topic, or just didn’t care about the democratic principles involved. To add, the meeting almost seemed too informal with spontaneous laughter from
councillors interrupting discussion about
every ten minutes.
CRO Pat Curley continued to deny mistakes were made after council had admitted such. Councillors have even voiced discontent for Curley’s Job as CRO. A significant number of complaints were filed with Curly. However, they saw no justice and were virtually ignored in deciding the outcome.
Haste. It is the most accurate word describing debate over the issue. Before an agreement was drawn, Clare Henderson, Student Council President pushed a vote in front of council to ratify the elections. This was done in the middle of a hot debate between several councillors. It was just too fast. The nerved Student Council President talked too fast, topics jumped too quickly, discussion was too brief.
Essentially, my point is that they’re voting for the wrong reasons. Although the outcome is completely agreeable by some parties involved, councillors are voting for the wrong reasons. In fact, it seems like many councillors have no reason at all for voting. I cannot speculate if councillors were approached to vote yes and ratify the election but I can say that threats were made in council to vote yeS: Henderson herself voiced that councillors should ratify the elections so that they would not be bogged down with this issue during exams. What nerve! The Student Council President showed her true colours and swayed from her ideal unbiased opinion. It really hurts the student body when powerful positions like Henderson’s are used to obstruct justice.
I want to commend the four student councillors who take their job seriously and decided to abstain for whatever reasons they had. Some were not involved in the situation, and decided to vote accordingly.
Next year I hope those successful in the recent election can do their best to restore dignity to the student council. The epitome of student union politics.