On The Simpsons Bart is urged to run for class president against Martin, the goody-two-shoes of the fourth grade. Bart’s campaign is a steamroller that easily should have won. However, no one, not even Bart himself, remembers to vote. He loses the election 2-0.
Homer later consoles Bart by reminding him that Martin won’t get any money and he is going to have to do extra work. And, he isn’t going to get to “do anything neat like throw out the first ball at the World Series.”
Being student body president does have its perks; the staff-parking sticker is a major one. And you have the chance, between managing an active social life and taking a full course load of classes, to implement some manner of change. Still, soon enough you are out of office and once you have a job or you enter graduate school you might not even include your presidency on your resume.
All individuals who ran this year are no doubt very earnest and well meaning in their pursuit of FUSA highest office. However, some parts of the campaigns were comical to say the least.
“FUSA will break boundaries,” Paul Duffy declared at the debates. He sounded like a civil-rights activist or something. I really couldn’t imagine one person in the audience honestly breathing a sigh of relief that someone was finally going to break the “boundaries.” (I am now hard-pressed to see what these boundaries actually are.)
There is also Rory “Man on the Moon” Butterly, the man who never had a campaign platform. He promised to deal with the issues, as they would come up if elected. You have to wonder what the point of even running was and whether there shouldn’t be some rule against this kind of vacant candidate.
Frank Arrigo, however, laid out a detailed platform in this very paper only to be absent from the debates all together. (Combine Rory’s warm-body with Frank’s campaign and you would actually have had a candidate.)
Incumbent Kevin Neubauer hailed this as a “banner year” for FUSA. It may have been a very good year in terms of attendance numbers. (And, in my personal opinion he did an excellent job.) However, you have to wonder if any one will someday look back wistfully at FUSA 2002-3? Not likely.
In the future, modern-artist Andy Warhol once said, we will all be famous for fifteen minutes. To FUSA presidents past and present I sure hope those weren’t your fifteen minutes.
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