Oh, dear God. The fumes coming from sidewalk chalk can only mean one thing: It’s student election season again.
If you’re like me – and why wouldn’t you want to be like me? – you know that the most important issue during the Student Government Association election is the issue of avoiding the damn SGA election. And with four candidates this year, it’s going to be especially tricky.
I think my first course of action is going to be finding a route that doesn’t go around the Stamp Student Union, because that’s where all the minions with the stupid fliers lurk. The late and great Mitch Hedberg once said, “When someone hands you a flier, it’s like they’re saying, ‘Here, you throw this away.'”
And the amount of walking surface that is now already covered in chalk is downright startling. It’s not just the fact that I don’t care that bothers me, but moreso, it’s the strange messages that people think sound smart. Like, “We are all ONE: Vote ONE Party.” I wouldn’t vote for the vast majority of people here, and they’re all in the ONE Party now? Yikes, I’m going to go ahead and not vote. Sorry, Steve Glickman.
Or maybe I will. A quick check of the CONNECT Party’s website shows a huge picture of a Chipotle burrito. Now there’s some delicious legislation I can get behind. Does it matter that I don’t know any of their policies, or who Wanika Fisher is? I don’t know. But if Chipotle wants my vote, they’ve got it.
If you don’t feel like “connecting” UMD, let’s “Unite UMD,” which is yet another party fielding a presidential candidate, Nick Mongelluzzo. Their motto, “Proven Experience. Strengthening Communities. Getting Results,” is sure to lose the English majors’ votes because apparently parallel structure isn’t part of their campaign platform. Come on, guys, you’re better than that.
Speaking of losing the grammatical vote, we come lastly to the fourth presidential hopeful, none other than former Diamondback opinion columnist Malcolm Harris of the Student Power Party. The party’s website advocates that we “hold a book swap day on the Mall so that you can trade books with people with other students.” As if I needed another reason to not vote for a former columnist. Columnists are terrible, wretched people. I mean, would you vote for me?
So besides the fact that all the campaign propaganda is annoying and I don’t care about any of the parties, it’s going to be a humdinger of a week until literally tens of people cast their votes for the next person who won’t get anything done.
It’s not that I hate democracy; I just hate student democracy. It’s so contrived and just filled with buzzwords such as “transparency” and “sustainability.” How about some shut-up-ability? I have a paper due, and I don’t want to hear about your plan for more streetlights or something.
So for all of you handing out flyers, take a good, long look at the mugshot on this column, and stop bugging the crap out of me. And as far as all the sidewalk chalk goes, I hope it rains.
Rob Gindes is a junior journalism major. He can be reached at gindesdbk@gmail.com
