Now UC It, Now You Don’t

As campaigning for Undergraduate Council (UC) presidential and vice-presidential races has started to gain momentum, each ticket is frantically and loudly trying to get its message out to the student body. Yet one of the most important resources for an informed voter remains unavailable to the student body: the voting record of its representatives.

Despite assurances that the new electronic roll call voting system would mean that the voting records of every member of the UC would be available online on the UC’s website, nothing has happened this semester. Those records, along with minutes from the UC’s meetings, are supposed to be posted on the website in a timely manner. The website’s state of disrepair comes despite the fact that the current UC secretary ran on a platform emphasizing his ability to maintain the website properly. Thus, the UC’s most effective, simple, and important method of keeping the student body informed is nonexistent.

The best way for the student body to make an informed vote for UC president is to be educated about the tickets as a whole, not just about their self-styled running platforms. If students cannot see what positions the candidates have taken on previous issues, they have little chance of making a properly informed decision when voting. Considering the controversies surrounding many of the UC’s decisions over the past few semesters, students need to be able to hold candidates accountable for past missteps, not only for the good of the students, but for the good of the candidates themselves. While previous work for the UC necessarily emerges as a key point in elections, without an official record of voting, this can become a largely meaningless exercise in rhetoric from the various tickets.

As it is now, most students have little idea of what their representatives do on the UC. Few students have the time to attend the UC’s meetings, so the UC’s website was correctly envisioned as the most effective way of transmitting information about the UC’s day-to-day activities. There is no excuse for its current state of decay.

The UC’s banner presidential and vice-presidential campaigns this year should go beyond personal attacks. They should be more than popularity contests. For students to engage candidates on the issues, they need to know where their candidates stood when the chips were down. It is a regrettable coincidence that, just when student interest in the UC and campus issues is peaking, the UC is not prepared to facilitate inquiries on candidates’ records. We hope the UC’s new leadership creates an actionable plan for a revamped website as soon as is humanly possible. In the interim, we just wish they would post those roll call votes.