Turning Our Sights To The Sites

As effective as it is to flood freshman dorm windows with brightly colored posters, modern UC campaigning is more about Web sites than wall signs. In an era where computer access is more important than stump speeches, students can find out everything they need to know about this year’s frontrunners without ever making human contact. But students relying on the sites to make decisions may find themselves in something of a bind.

Both leading candidates boast snazzy sites full of personal biographies and various aspects of their platforms. One learns from www.schwartzbiggers.com that Benjamin P. Schwartz ’10, hailing from Pennsylvania, likes red spice chicken, while Alneada D. Biggers ’10, from Alabama, prefers broccoli chicken and cheese pockets. Who knew!? If you consider the candidates’ dietary habits to be crucial in your decision-making process, then this discovery may just seal the deal. Dietary preferences are given less attention the Web site of Andrea Flores ’10 and Kia McLeod ’10, www.studentstogether.com—but it does note that Flores enjoys a “steady diet of love.”

On a more serious note, the Web sites both discuss financial concerns that will be facing the UC in the coming year. Schwarts and Biggers speak soberly of the impact of the economic crisis on campus life: “It will be the job of the next UC President and Vice President to ensure that, even in the face of budget cuts, commitment to student life remains untouched.” Similarly, Flores and McLeod note that “not only are student groups struggling to plan and execute social events, but their educational events, such as lectures, panels, and forums, are incurring higher costs.”

The parallels between the two sites do not stop there. Both campaigns discuss their unique and revolutionary plans to use the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on Brattle Street as a student space, bring back a revised party grant system, and instituting a “J-term.”

The Web sites further address the different outlooks the frontrunners have on student input in changes the UC is striving to make. As Schwarts and Biggers put it, “We find ourselves at a turning point where student voices can be heard and significant positive changes can be made for student life.” Flores and McLeod, on the other hand, “believe in a different type of advocacy, one that listens to student opinion and leverages the power of many to achieve real change.” Clearly, the distinction between “student voices” and “student opinion” is the type of difference that can make or break elections.

So, what will it be? Chicken or Love? Voices or Opinions? Only you can decide.

—Mark J. Chiusano