2008 Woodie Awards
Political woes at WIU
Issue date: 4/2/08 Section: Opinion
Travel around the neighborhoods and one thing becomes perfectly clear: Blake Antonides and Jessie Kallman are running for the Board of Trustees in the current student election. Their purple and gold signs dot yards and wave from the side of buildings.
These signs extol the candidates' merits, but there has been an underlying ugliness that has pervaded the BOT campaign. A committee found both candidates guilty of breaking election rules, and both were punished.
But it is the things the candidates have not been found guilty of that students should be concerned about. Tips have floated through the Courier office about deceitful campaign promises, campaign tactics that are ethically questionable and even administrators forcing student-athletes to vote a certain way or risk losing playing time.
We do not want to comment on which ones we think are true and which ones not. Whether the rumors are 100 percent true or not is hardly the issue. What does bother us, however, is that these rumors most likely have a foundation in truth.
And because rumors travel so fast on a small campus like Western, anyone slightly interested has heard some version of these half-truths. This gossip only serves to turn students off of the entire political process. No one but those directly involved in the campaigns wants to walk through the sludge left in each campaign's trail.
The student representative on the BOT is the highest-ranking student position at Western and should be held to a higher ethical standard than the rest. However, gossip brings both candidates down to the level of Washington politicians.
We want our elected officials to be our representatives, and people who stoop so low to attain that position do not deserve our vote. The elections have been going on since Monday and will be done Thursday, but we hope the candidates will at least be more civil for the last half of the election.
It is unfortunate that we even have to write an editorial about this. We encourage candidates of the future to take note of the current campaigns and strive to avoid such behavior.
We hope this election cycle has not turned too many freshmen off to student government at Western.
These signs extol the candidates' merits, but there has been an underlying ugliness that has pervaded the BOT campaign. A committee found both candidates guilty of breaking election rules, and both were punished.
But it is the things the candidates have not been found guilty of that students should be concerned about. Tips have floated through the Courier office about deceitful campaign promises, campaign tactics that are ethically questionable and even administrators forcing student-athletes to vote a certain way or risk losing playing time.
We do not want to comment on which ones we think are true and which ones not. Whether the rumors are 100 percent true or not is hardly the issue. What does bother us, however, is that these rumors most likely have a foundation in truth.
And because rumors travel so fast on a small campus like Western, anyone slightly interested has heard some version of these half-truths. This gossip only serves to turn students off of the entire political process. No one but those directly involved in the campaigns wants to walk through the sludge left in each campaign's trail.
The student representative on the BOT is the highest-ranking student position at Western and should be held to a higher ethical standard than the rest. However, gossip brings both candidates down to the level of Washington politicians.
We want our elected officials to be our representatives, and people who stoop so low to attain that position do not deserve our vote. The elections have been going on since Monday and will be done Thursday, but we hope the candidates will at least be more civil for the last half of the election.
It is unfortunate that we even have to write an editorial about this. We encourage candidates of the future to take note of the current campaigns and strive to avoid such behavior.
We hope this election cycle has not turned too many freshmen off to student government at Western.
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Blake Antonides
posted 4/02/08 @ 11:51 AM CST
My name is Blake Antonides, one of the candidates that his article discusses. I assure the readers that I have never suggested in any way to a University administrator or anyone else that someone should face retribution for voting for my opponent. (Continued…)
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