Today, for only the second time in Notre Dame history, a ticket for student body president and vice president will face the polls unopposed. When this last happened 13 years ago, 42.7% of voters pulled the lever for ‘abstain,’ not including the thousands who did not vote.
We encourage you to follow their example and abstain. Or don’t open the email. It doesn’t particularly matter.
This is not to say anything about the candidates in this year’s election, who present as decent and well-intentioned individuals who will do a respectable job. But they’re winning anyway, so you may as well register your protest with the system.
Last year, The Observer decided to break its decades-long tradition of endorsing one of the tickets, instead advising our readers to “take a look” at student government and make their own decision, laying out the failures of a sprawling bureaucratic network that fails to achieve campaign promises or much else. We’ve taken a look, and have come to the conclusion that it is a failed project. Abolition is the remedy.
We’ve asked ourselves whether the ticket seeking office can do a good job, and found that a “good job” is impossible given the nature of this system and the cosplay function that student leaders are shoehorned into.
Obviously, student government isn’t going anywhere, but it could at least be stripped of its excess. A democratically elected student body president serving as symbolic leader at official functions — without the theatrics or bureaucratic sprawl — would be a marked improvement. Instead, we’ve watched student government burn through hundreds of thousands of dollars on initiatives that generate more meetings than results.
In some ways, it is a good thing that there is only one ticket on the ballot. It shatters the pretense of the usual popularity contest election and confirms what many already suspect — student government isn’t a battleground of ideas, but an exercise in self-selection. In the past, we’ve seen tickets with relatively similar visions and ambitious policy platforms lacking real substance.
The fact that there’s only one ticket running suggests that students across campus have recognized student government for what it is and chosen to disengage. Last year, only about half of campus voted in the student body election, while the preceding election saw less than a third of students casting ballots.
Our presumptive student body president argues that it’s a good sign that there’s one ticket, telling The Observer that it represented an agreement in the world of student government. The people in this network have coalesced behind one vision. If true, that’s an unsettling sign. We don’t need more of the same. His running mate offered a more convincing reason, that students were distracted by the Fighting Irish’s football championship run. We still think disengagement has a part to play, along with a lack of consistent information from Judicial Council.
This year, the circus of student government came into full view, with the attempted impeachment of a senator for a humorous email criticizing student government executives sent to his neighbors in Knott Hall. We saw the way that ostensibly boring constitutional procedure can be a malicious power struggle behind the scene, fueled by petty egos and demands for respect. The stories were a much-needed reminder that student politics are largely about playing pretend. When a student political party decided to engage, the trollish nature of their political rhetoric was embarrassing. Hunter Brooke’s ouster was the result of competing egos and individual transgressions, not a “corrupt power grab from the radical left.” None of this is real.
As we said last year, students serving in student government are obviously capable of accomplishing things on this campus. But too often, the realization of their policy goals has been fleeting or symbolic. Furthermore, the bloated system of student government encourages them to emulate the air of title-hungry politicians and cater to administrators rather than students. The presumptive vice president noted many of her friends in the band did not even know that we had a student body president. When asked to name the most visible achievement of the past administration, the candidates pointed to new spices in the dining hall. While clubs fight for funding and dorms wait on working laundry machines, student government delivered paprika.
Notre Dame prides itself on preparing students to be a “force for good.” This means cultivating students who are ready to use real, human emotions and morals to make a positive impact. It does not mean channeling the superficial qualities inside each of us that politicians use to rise to the top of bureaucracies.
We are not the first people to make this critique. In the 1962 Port Huron Statement, then-student activist Tom Hayden wrote: “The accompanying ‘let’s pretend’ theory of student extracurricular affairs validates student government as a training center for those who want to spend their lives in political pretense, and discourages initiative from more articulate, honest and sensitive students.”
As long as student government remains the intermediary between their peers and Notre Dame administrators, who always have the final say, the grand ideas of a policy platform mean nothing in the frame of a one-year term. Compounding the problem, the organization of student government attracts both dedicated leaders and “resume sharks” — as one candidate in the 2024 race called them. Discerning the difference is anyone’s guess.
At times, the student body president and vice president bring student concerns to the attention of administrators. At other times, administrators and University leaders turn to these elected officials seeking a benchmark of the student population. Student leaders are both a representation of student voices and a resource for administrators to tap. This means their success relies entirely on the ability to persuade a plethora of administrators across the University’s own bureaucracy. We wish the incoming cabinet the best of luck, and found ourselves charmed enough to be hopeful about their meetings with the bureaucrats.
For now, we’re opting out of the student body election and praying to be proven wrong.
