"Hey, what about me? Don't you want to hear what I think?"

After keeping my eye on the MacGillivray-Clarke campaign for the past few days, I noticed something was missing. The campaign is lacking initiative. MacGillivray and Clarke revealed their platform on the first day of campaigning and I haven’t seen a whole lot happen since.

I dropped by Lane Hall last night to check out the candidate meet-and-greet and was a little surprised by what I saw. What a great idea, I thought, allowing students to come to you in the comfort of their houses and interact with their potential student leaders. An idea like this would allow for students to actively participate in democracy without ever leaving their place of residence – how could you possibly go wrong? I walked in, was not greeted by either candidate and watched as a similar scenario played out with the few students who dropped by.

As I walked home afterwards, I got to thinking, if MacGillivray and Clarke can’t approach students to talk about issues they created and presumably know well, how can we expect them to fight for student concerns with university administration, various organizations, and the federal and provincial governments?

Perhaps it’s just early campaign jitters, but in my opinion, a campaign needs more than just good ideas. A campaign needs communication of good ideas; every new encounter should be treated as an opportunity to engage students in interactive discussions about their views and opinions. If this election is about the students and the office of the president is about working for the students, then students need to be shown that now.

- Danielle

*The views expressed in this post are entirely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of StFX's Students' Union.