Student Council Elections

These past two-to-three weeks, I have been rather busy campaigning for the student council elections that are currently happening at our school.  Yesterday was Election Day...And tomorrow, we will know which two candidates will become our new grade representatives.

It's funny, really.  It's really quite funny. 

Ah, how do I put it?  It's actually pretty hard to express how I feel right now in words.  But I suppose the closest adjectives I could use would be "disappointed" and "confused".  I'm disappointed that the whole election had been simply a huge popularity contest, and I'm confused about why people didn't take it seriously at all.

From the start of this, people have been campaigning.  Yet, barely anyone went beyond "vote for me; c'mon, you're my friend, right?"  People have put posters up.  Yet, based on an account from a girl in the grade higher than us, posters have been ripped off too, by unfeeling opponents.  And people have been trying their very hardest to show their grade-mates that they are suited to the position they are running for.  And yet, most of us are oblivious to the slandering that has been going on as well.  The trash-talk, the "oh, don't vote for ..." conversations that travel from person to person, the Facebook bullying. 

Yesterday, we did our candidate speeches.  The difference in the amount of applause for each candidate was laughable.  Some people got huge ovations from the audience; some people barely got any.  And the thing was, the amount of cheering wasn't based on how good the speeches were.  The ones who clearly were in favour of the audience were the ones who were...well, "more popular".

I'd like to quote a conversation I heard after our presentations:

Person A:  Who do you think is going to win?
Person B:  Oh, x and y.
Person A:  Why?  Were their speeches good?
Person B:  Well, there were people with better speeches, but they're still going to win.
Person A:  ...?
Person B:  Yeah, since they're really popular.

Not, "they're going to win since they're reliable, and mature", not "they're going to win because their speeches were powerful and captivating", and not "they're going to win because they stand up for what they believe in and would make excellent representatives".  Interesting, don't you think?

Today, a friend of mine told me that people were telling him that no one was voting for Vicky.  He wasn't the first one to inform me.  Then, this other girl told me that I shouldn't have made my speech so "serious".  She said that we, as grade x's, don't care about such things and that I should've made my speech funny instead.  But, reading over my speech again, I realized that no, I wasn't serious anyhow, unless telling people to vote for someone truly commited and responsible is being "serious".  And wait, isn't being serious better than being indifferent to the position's duties?  Huh.

And I could go on forever, you know, but you'd probably fall asleep.  So I'll stop now by saying that I know I won't win this, and I'm not saying that I absolutely should win this.  I'm just saying that popularity seems to play more of a factor in s.c. elections than does devotion and commitment.  Oh well.

I'll see tomorrow whether people actually know the difference between someone who would actually qualify as a potentially amazing rep and someone who's just there for show.

-Vociferously yours, Vicky.