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Day Seven — Debaters gonna debate

The moment Mike Tithecott learned he would be the next USC president. His father is on the far right in the green scarf.

I met Andrew Forgione’s mom on Friday.

It’s easy to forget in all of the craziness surrounding the University Students’ Council elections that these candidates are just real people with moms and dads and problems of their own.

I think it’s a byproduct of the campaign’s ridiculous branding — which is unfortunately 100 per cent necessary to winning this thing — that we don’t really think of Forgione and his colleagues Omid Salari and David Basu Roy as having lives outside of the race. When all you see is a smiling face, a colour scheme, a polished website, an overtly friendly twitter feed and symbolic logo, you forget that just a week ago these same folks were walking around campus just like you. Marching class-to-class, barely recognizable amidst the sea of Western students.

Meeting Forgione’s mom actually reminded me of Mike Tithecott’s dad who was somewhat of a fixture during his son’s ultimately successful campaign for USC president last year. The moment immediately after Tithecott was named president, when him and his father embraced each other crying, was probably one of the more powerful, emotional moments a USC election has ever seen. It went mostly unreported but anyone who was there knows just how affecting the moment was. I certainly haven’t forgotten it.

Don’t worry, I haven’t gone soft. It’s just moments like those that really give you perspective on the zaniness that is USC Elections at Western. The moment I had to talk to Mrs. Forgione on Friday was a small one. But a really nice one at the same time.

The debate over debate in the debates

As usual, the Gazette is driving the discourse when it comes to Western and the USC, this time by pointing out, justly I might add, that this year’s debates so far haven’t featured any actual debate.

Former USC presidential candidate Andrew Beach weighed in. Quickly followed by Omid Salari himself. We also heard from current senator and Fuss on the Buser Pat Searle.

For me, the USC debates are really just question and answer sessions. And while it’s nice to hear the candidates elaborate on their platforms and explain how they would handle certain predicaments, it’s frankly played out.

Take Saturday’s presidential debate, for instance, which was attended by approximately five to ten people who weren’t on the USC, campaign team members or campus media. Hey, that was Mike Tithecott’s estimation, not mine. (Mine would have been much lower)

What is the point, I must ask, of wasting four hours on a Saturday afternoon to answer well-formed questions before a crowd of decided voters? The actual constituents are voting with their butts by not showing up and telling everyone involved “hey! Listen to us! We don’t care!”

Saturday afternoon, I would imagine, is a prime time to hit up one of the university’s residences, canvassing first years who have little knowledge of the USC and getting them involved. You had your best chance of catching them actually in their residences on Saturday afternoon, unlike on weekdays when they could be off at class or, heaven forbid, involved with something extra-curricular on campus.  But instead we did this.

I only stuck it out for the first two hours — I am still a sports writer by day — and as I understand it the questions and answers improved as the event entered its second half. But who, tuning in from home on the internet, would have possibly stuck it out that long to see the candidates challenge each other?

You know my opinion on the motivations behind Saturday’s debate which essentially boiled down to a self-serving USC auditing procedure. Call me blunt, but the harsher thing to say would be that USC genuinely thought campus needed yet another Q and A session with the candidates. On a Saturday morning. For four hours.

Call me crazy, but what I think we need is actual debate sessions on current USC topics. We need to open the floor to the issues that the candidates should be well versed on. The USC’s role in environmentalism, the USC’s retail operations, O-Week, clubs and services, the LTC. I could go on.

We also need to open the floor to students and let them line up and ask questions. Why can’t they be involved in the process? Why do we only debate before councils, the media and people waiting in line to buy a CLT? These are people who are already informed and likely already know who they are going to vote for.

Oh yeah — there’s another problem. The Gazette, CHRW and Big Purple Couch. We’re egotistical maniacs and we use these sessions as a forum to prove how smart we are. Yeah I ‘effin said it.

The debates shouldn’t be about which member of campus media can research and form the most challenging question. We shouldn’t be getting our rocks off by trying to trip up the candidates like we were on Saturday. We should be letting the candidates talk. We should literally just be saying “USC Finances — Go!” and letting the three duke it out.

In the prudent words of Will Ferrell’s Frank the tank: “That’s how you debate!”

Odds and ends

• The folks at Big Purple Couch are obviously wise people. They chose to recruit Matt Ryan, the undoubted front runner in this race and clearly the best man to be president, to help interrogate the presidential hopefuls on stage in The Spoke. MR. Western doesn’t only have a bright future ahead of him as USC president, he apparently has a knack for television as well. You can watch all of the interviews on BPC’s YouTube page.
• Today in videos: Forgione has a recap of his Sunday, which involved talking to the affiliates and watching the Super Bowl while ‘chilling in the sack.’ Whatever that means….  Meanwhile, Salari shares his thoughts on the UWOFA and UWOSA debacles from last year and even throws out the ‘s’ word when it comes to students. Think we can strike over the outrageous price of nachos in The Spoke? Finally, David Basu Roy sits on the ugliest couch on planet earth to talk about his experience in an extremely canned, rehearsed fashion. No, I don’t know why.
• It wouldn’t be a passing day without a pair of USCers earning accolades after doing a minimal amount of work. (I kid!) Zach Valliant has been acclaimed as the new president of MIT and he is joined on council by the MIT’s new USC representative Jess Bronstein. Big ups to both of them, or whatever the MIT hipsters are saying these days. I’m so out of touch.
• I mean, you could have gone to the presidential debate before the Huron University Students’ Council on Sunday. But, really, why would you? What exactly is Huron anyway? Is that one of those new rooms in the basement of the UCC? Also, there’s no reason to attend when Huron president Adam Fearnall tweets every ounce of oxygen expelled from the mouths of the candidates. If you’ve got a couple hours, read up on his timeline.

And this kind of leads me to something that bugs me a bit. I’ve been getting comments at debates such as ‘oh, are you tweeting this?’ ‘Why isn’t one of the official USC media outlets live-tweeting this?’ ‘Andrew Forgione tells me twitter is important. Why don’t you twitter more about what he says?’

Firstly — we do tweet the debates. Every single one of them. If you aren’t following our news team of KaleighAtGazette, MonicaAtGazette, GloriaAtGazette and Cheryl Stone — who works too hard to possibly maintain a twitter account — you’re missing out. They will tell you about the minuscule debate details you surely do not care about.

Secondly, if you’re not a member of the media at Western — you lucky bastard — you are more than welcome to live tweet from a debate. Citizen journalism is great. But at least try to have some neutrality. If you’re praising Forgione’s debate performance from a twitter account that features the candidate’s logo in the profile picture or tweeting choice Basu Roy quotes from his own freakin’ twitter account, it’s not really helping.

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