On Saturday, following several years of covering the University Students’ Council for the Gazette, I finally made it to my first Annual General Meeting (part 2). This is the meeting where the USC internally elects next year’s Board of Directors.

Here’s the basic process for AGM II: the meeting starts at 9 a.m. and goes until 5 p.m. Over the course of the day, candidates for vice president of campus issues, finance, student events and university affairs will be vetted in a process very similar to how the Gazette operates the USC presidential media forum — candidates give opening statements, answer a variety of pointed and general questions, and then give closing statements.

Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, there’s a few flies in the ointment when the USC gets involved. First, there’s no cap on the debate time period. If councillors really want to stretch something out, then the process can take hours (like on Friday, when the VP finance segment spanned two hours and over 50 questions for a measly two candidates).

I’m all for democracy and getting questions out there — these candidates are supposed to represent thousands of undergraduate students in a variety of forums both outside and inside the Western community. But with that being said, I’m not entirely sure how constructive the process is as it currently stands.

Maybe it’s just me being an egotistical prick, but I like to think the questions I put together along with the rest of the Gazette election staff for the media forum are well-researched and require some thought on the part of the candidate to answer the question well.

Saturday, on the other hand, featured questions like “what platform point would you take from one of your opponents if you win?” or “which candidate would you vote for if you weren’t running?” These questions serve no purpose. They don’t tell you anything about the candidate other than that they aren’t afraid to recognize a good idea when they see one — a quality that would hopefully arise over the course of the campaign anyway.

Then there’s the bigger issue of sabotage questions. Let’s face it: most of the USC enters this meeting with a pretty good idea of who they’re going to vote for. While there were a couple of close votes, the likelihood of a multitude of votes switching over is an idealistic misconception. As a result, excessively negative or soft questions pop up, either to make one candidate look bad or make another look better. Which in effect means everyone just looks foolish.

Unfortunately I think the biggest perception this first-time viewer had coming out of the AGM was the same jaded perspective I’ve obtained from covering the organization for the last three years. This meeting serves more as a means for councillors to hear the sound of their own voice and perform for an audience instead of representing student’s interests like they’re supposed to.

Tonight the USC decides whether it will put the changes proposed by the governance review panel into effect. After years of watching a disinterested council be led around by executive teams of various power levels, I would love to see the average councillor take some pride in their job and start to represent the students they were elected by.