Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life is for N.C. State’s SGA? Just when this university’s Student Government Association election couldn’t have been more boring and uneventful, one of our ACC brethren down South is receiving national attention after a pirate won its SGA presidency.

That’s right, a full-blown, parrot on the shoulder, booty-seeking, eye-patch-wearing pirate.

While Andrew Rose won an election in an eight-candidate field that drew the lowest voter turnout in five years, N.C. State student Whil “The Pirate Captain” Piavis sailed away with the victory in a race in which more than a quarter of the student body voted.

Piavis and his scurvy crew spoke only in a pirate accent, and he didn’t release his real identity until he won. Instead of having a platform, he had a plank, and one of his first proclaimed goals once he takes office is to eliminate all the scurvy dogs from the university. He proposed a scholarship based on a writing contest about pirates and used the words “bae” or “scurvy” in almost every interview he did for the campaign.

Despite all this, he ran away with the election and became the student voice for that university.

And we thought Tim Daly and Aaron Kraus were a little nutty. But with that said, I’m not sure if I would rather have the Pirate Captain as the future SGA president over Rose. Before you completely write me off and figure I’ve sipped a little too much of the Captain’s special brew, hear me out.

After four years of following the SGA for The Diamondback, there’s only one thing I am sure of: The SGA is completely irrelevant if no one is paying attention to it.

Going into the election, nobody cared, and when it came time to vote, it showed. Only 19 percent of the student body voted, and 273 of those voters didn’t even believe it was necessary to mark down who they wanted the next president to be.

Down in Raleigh — where there was a buzz about the SGA and the scalawags running for office — the numbers of those who voted leaped from 18.5 percent to 26.9 percent. The spotlight was on the SGA, and people actually talked about student issues.

This is what Daly and Kraus were so good at. While you might not have agreed with some of their methods, they did their part to get the university in the headlines. Whether it was Daly’s documentary about Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R) or Kraus’ hunger strike, the people in Annapolis — including the governor — could name the SGA president and had to pay attention to him.

Now, I’m not saying the SGA president should be nothing but a publicity stunt artist, and no, I can’t imagine state legislators ever really taking a student seriously if he consistently showed up to the state house with an eye patch, but for God’s sake, do something. I bet two-thirds of the student body didn’t even know an election was taking place last week.

Before I go further, I am glad Rose won over the idiots who said the SGA president shouldn’t be distracted by what’s going on in Annapolis, didn’t bother learning key people’s names in the city and said the state wasn’t that important. Why did these students even waste their time running for office? It’s scary thinking someone would try to become the voice of the students and not even know the College Park mayor’s name. Wow.

I diverge from the main point. But Rose better start brainstorming ways to grab the attention of state, city and university leaders to keep up the momentum Daly and Kraus have created toward making the SGA relevant in the eyes of students.

He is off to a bad start when university issues are more important than ever. The Pirate Captain might be a bit extreme, but if Rose doesn’t get the attention of the students quickly, his presidency is going to come down with a case of scurvy. Argh!

Michael Hoffman is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at mrhoffman17@yahoo.com.