In the aftermath of the recent student body election, I was greatly disappointed by the behavior of many of the candidates and their supporters. I received around six different e-mails from people supporting the various candidates. I also received four private messages on facebook. Worst of all, two of the messages on facebook came from the same person, and they each endorsed different candidates. They were also sent out within one minute of each other. This immediately invoked my suspicion.
This leads me to believe that either ad-ware software was used to produce these mass mailings remotely or that someone stole this person's password to do so. Since I know the person who "sent" the messages, I doubt he had anything to do with mailing them. These activities are highly dubious. Furthermore, the messages I received were from three of the five tickets.
That is not the whole story. There were flyers everywhere, some of them without the proper student activities authorization for display. One ticket's team even went into unlocked rooms around campus and put flyers on people's desks. This gross disregard for personal privacy drove me away from voting for that particular candidate.
Of the five tickets, only the obvious joke ticket which did nothing to even try to win, avoided using these tactics. It is a sad statement to democracy when student government elections can not even be run without campaign improprieties. Sadly enough, this strategy works. I know a lot about each ticket because of this intrusive campaigning. So who knows what will happen? In a few years, maybe Dick Cheney will be spamming my inbox telling me to vote for him too. Well at least I'll be able to put that into my junk mail folder alongside all those herbal Viagra ads I keep getting.
God bless America.
John NawarasophomoreZahm hallFeb. 14
