Zachary Noyce: Reasons not to take the UA seriously

I've been signing a lot of petitions lately. Locust Walk is plastered with about seven times as much litter as usual. People keep trying to introduce themselves to me.

That's election season. That's democracy.

For the last week or so, you'd have to be living under a rock or be an Engineering student not to notice that Undergraduate Assembly elections are under way. It's funny; lately, I've seen signs with the letters "UA" on them everywhere, and they're supposed to mean something to me -- even though a month ago, I probably would have guessed they stood for "underage" or "upset aardvark" and then questioned how you knew its emotions.

So while I was grumbling to myself on the Walk while faking an arm twitch to get the a cappella groups to leave me alone, I had a revelation. It was beginning to seem like the upcoming elections might be sort of important. This surprised me so much that I stopped in my tracks. Unfortunately, at this point, the swarm overtook me -- four performing arts groups, three activist groups and I'm pretty sure a cult or two handed me flyers. Never do important thinking on the Walk.

In light of my recent decision that the upcoming election was important, I decided that I needed to educate myself on the issues. And it was hard. I figured out what lots of the candidates had to say, and I agreed with a lot of it, but I couldn't find any real salient voting points on which the candidates would actually disagree. Let's face it, without Planned Parenthood, the National Rifle Association or a Cuban infantryman's rifle pointed at the base of your skull, it's difficult deciding how to vote.

After going through all of the candidates, I was struck by just how noble many of them seemed. Each candidate had a great vision about how to make Penn a better place -- lowering prices in the Penn Bookstore (yeah, right), ending all crime on campus while still making security less of a hassle (that's reasonable), converting Superblock into a giant trampoline (a man can dream). I couldn't go wrong; no matter which candidates won in the election, they would make huge changes to the University.

Just like the UA officials of every year have.

Not until I started doing research about the UA did I begin getting jaded. It seems that no matter how hard the UA tries, they can't enact the significant changes that they really want. It's simply too easy for the Board of Trustees, the administration or the Aflac duck to overrule them.

There seems to be a vicious cycle at work. First, the UA passes a landmark resolution that would change life at Penn forever; second, the student population agrees with it but laughs at its ridiculous nature because they know the next step in the cycle; third, the administration rejects the proposal.

My spirit broken, I returned to the online UA ballot and immediately understood why so many candidates went for the cheap laugh instead of describing their positions on important issues. Suddenly, the candidates who make a mockery of the election process in a way that would force political science majors to cry themselves to sleep seemed far more enlightened. Suddenly, "One point 21 gigawatts!" seemed a better campaign slogan than "New ideas for Penn." Making a mockery of the election seemed far less a mockery of the election than taking the election seriously.

I know that I -- like most voters -- will not be voting based on the issues in this election. And what's more, I don't think I should. Whether through a fault of its own or of other forces, the UA is a joke, so I'll treat it like one. I don't think I even want to elect anyone who thinks otherwise. So make me laugh, and you've got my vote. Tell me that you deserve my vote because you'll make a real difference in the Penn community, and I'll really laugh -- though not in the way that will get you my vote.

Maybe this is precisely why the UA is ineffective. We don't take our student government seriously, so obviously the administration won't. The problem might lie in the apathy of students like me. We ask for kicks and giggles instead of policy, and candidates appease us. We never discuss real issues in the campaign, and when the UA tries to take up real issues, neither we nor the administration takes it seriously.

If the UA were a respected and effective body of government, life for Penn undergraduates would improve significantly. I wish I could make that kind of change.

But then I'd have to run for UA. No thanks.

Zachary Noyce is a freshman in the College from Taylorsville, Utah. The Stormin’ Mormon appears on alternate Fridays.

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