Come next Monday and Tuesday, every Cornell student casting his or her vote Student Assembly (SA) President will be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Whomever they choose for president, it will be little more than an exercise in choosing the least worst.
This election is nothing more than a popularity contest. Every endorsement strewn across Facebook groups, events, and pages is based on the alleged ability of the candidate to “get things done,” “lead all students,” or some other nebulous, boilerplate phrase. As incumbents with large social networks on campus and the ability to dole out many favors, Juliana Batista and Matthew Stefanko in particular are executing election strategies consisting mostly of racking up as many endorsements as possible. It’s smart, since most Cornell students who do vote will most likely just try to recall the endorsements of the favorite club they are in. Winning endorsements behind closed doors is probably a tricky process, one where issues might even matter. But on the whole, it’s clear issues really don’t matter in terms of mass appeal to the student body.
All three candidates–Batista, Stefanko, and Jeffrey Breuer–have nearly identical platforms all grounded in their liberal politics. Sure, Batista stylizes herself as a level-headed consensus-builder, Stefanko a swashbuckling populist, and Breuer a good-guy outsider (for this, he deserves some credit), but personalities aside, they all abide by the same credo of big government.
Every single interest group imaginable is satiated in their platforms, which are no more than a laundry list of programs, services, initiatives, task-forces, committees, and empty promises. In fact, if you belong to one of these coveted interest groups, you have to think to yourself about how these candidates–who didn’t care about you a month ago–are trying so hard now to win your endorsement. The candidates try to convince everyone an ever-expansive SA means ever-riches for the students. In reality, it means ever-riches for themselves, in the form of inflated egos, buffed-up resumes, and immense sway over the campus climate.
Instead of wasting your time looking at the candidates’ websites and videos, look at your friends’ Facebook profiles. Notice anything? Notice how half of your Cornell friends on Facebook have Stefanko and Batista banners on their profiles? A student named Isabella Greenberg even took time to make a Buzzfeed list about Stefanko.
The SA is such a weak organization, a toothless governing body. Why so much fanfare surrounding it? Well, for the candidates, there is prestige. For the interest groups, there is the chance to win favors and possibly push through radical legislation.
Time and time again many SA members and the rest of students take it upon themselves, or desire to take it upon themselves, to tackle “big issues.” These issues involve divestment, campus sexual assault policy, tuition, etc. Basically, nothing students have actual jurisdiction over.
Perhaps if the SA stopped trying to meddle in everyone’s lives, students would be happier. Issues like fossil fuel divestment, divestment from Israel, a “student bill of rights” (whatever that means), the ever-expanding clout of political correctness, etc. are not of the domain of the SA. Tackling these issues and voting for them is a waste of time, if not outright embarrassing for the University at times. Moreover, there is really nothing constructive the SA can actually do on the macro-scale. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s a weak institution–purposefully so–whose main job should be allocating funds to student groups and to small projects, like the placement of extra lamp posts and power outlets in various places around campus.
Despite the glaringly obvious fact that the SA is toothless, there was immense outcry and acrimony after the health fee announcement directed towards the the do-nothing SA. Such criticism was and remains misguided. Indeed, the fact that the SA did not warn students about the fee many knew about it before it was announced is beyond reproach and certainly reason enough why no incumbent on the executive committee should be re-elected. But, the SA’s attempt to re-insert itself in the healthcare fee “debate” and the “fight” against the fee way after the fact (about a month) was utterly asinine: a weak resolution that amounts to nothing.
How about immediately releasing info about the fee as soon as you receiving information about it to campus media outlets? That’s how to fight the fee.
The Cornell Review learned from several sources some SA members were afraid to go public with the health fee information for fear of losing their seats on the SA. That is cowardice. And if any of them are running for election this spring, they absolutely deserve to lose.
Actually, all three candidates deserve to lose. Unfortunately, one will prevail, and that one will be crowned “least worst.”
Nihil sub sole novum.