By snoadmin
Good news, Cal State Long Beach folks. We’ll be shed of traveling, parking and identity problems in a few weeks when the campus elections are over and the environmentally-unfriendly campaign signs are uprooted and “recycled.”
That’s a sort of cynical lead in an article about a topic as optimistic as student elections, when in fact, a few of the candidates at the Associated Students, Inc. press conference showed a bit of potential.
We’ll stop shy of assuring that any of them are our staff’s candidates of choice. We’re biting our collective tongues to spring that on you in a yet-to-be-determined issue. We won’t even attach names to the concerns and possible solutions offered at Tuesday’s photo op.
We might endorse a candidate or more in the near future if we can twist enough arms in the newsroom to form a consensus. We’re not expecting it to be as bloody around here as it got on Super Duper Tuesday, when our less-than-democratically determined endorsement went to Barack Obama.
Campus politics might not seem too stimulating on a commuter campus (one of the hot-button topics at the press conference), but this one, quite frankly, excites us. You have no idea how badly we’ve longed for a reason to get out of the newsroom for a few laughs.
One of the concerns brought up by hopefuls at the indoor parade that caught our attention was a need to improve communication between ASI and the student body.
The concept of a monthly e-blast of campus goings-on brought up by one candidate isn’t too bad of an idea, even if it cuts into the Daily Forty-Niner information-rendering turf.
Setting skepticism aside, we’ll try to absorb the public displays yet to come by attending the ceremony next Tuesday on Friendship Walk.
And, most certainly, the Daily Forty-Niner will have a casual observer (or 12) at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Wednesday. It’s not that we like politics or Wednesdays, or anything. Many of us just welcome a trip to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – or anywhere else on campus – even if it is on a Wednesday.
We would like to warn our young campus community of several things, but the real important one is, “Don’t talk to strangers.”
If you happen by Tuesday’s meet-and-greet, rest assured some overly-friendly person you’ve never met will approach you and ask if you need help tying your shoelaces.
That temporarily eager person probably wants you to vote him or her into office so he or she can help find out “how to finance new parking structures.”
As all 35,000 or so of you check your rapidly thinning wallets, contemplate the possibilities. In the real world, that won’t be an external anonymous source of “finance” putting up that building.
After consulting with our legal adviser, we offer some ambiguous tips that work for elections at most levels: Pay attention to what the candidates have to offer. Do they know the issues and is the office they seek capable of addressing them? If a politician’s goals are lofty, it’ll cost you.
Realize that optimism and ambition often cloud reality in what candidates can actually deliver when they are suddenly more than a candidate. Understand what they can actually provide you as services, compared to what you can afford.
After all, the money they spend may be your own.
