Day seventeen — Blog the photogs

Corey Stanford/Gazette

So yeah, Andrew Forgione is your next University Students’ Council president. Read the news story here and my column on his win here.

Forgione and his team campaigned their asses off until the bitter end, even deploying the tried and true campaign tactic of getting someone — an utter hack, by the way — to report that the opponent was ahead in the polls earlier in the day. It wasn’t necessary — Basu Roy and Salari’s votes combined couldn’t overtake Forgione — but it shows just how far Forgione’s team was willing to go for the win. You can’t fault a guy who does everything he can to secure victory. Don’t hate the player, and so on.

All I do is write

The Gazette’s unstoppable photography duo of Nyssa Kawahara and Corey Stanford have been doing a tremendous job of documenting this democratic debacle through stunning visuals the past two weeks. They’re both immensely talented and this blog would be nothing without their wonderful work featured at the top of every entry. I’m more than honoured to offer some choice selections from their USC elections portfolios.

Day Sixteen — My only friend, the end

Corey Stanford/Gazette

Oh, hey — it’s the last day of University Students’ Council Elections 2011. Whattayaknow?

I don’t know if this culminating day came quickly or slowly, to be honest. It doesn’t feels like it’s been more than half a month. Yet I also feel like this whole USC elections process has been akin to suffocating in quicksand.

So really, who knows. The good news is that it’s over and at 9:00 p.m. this evening we’ll know who the next USC president is and be able to return to our regular lives of never talking to each other.

Let’s just look forward to that.

Obviously, you should probably vote if you haven’t done so already. But more importantly than anything — get informed, damnit. Just remember yesterday’s quote of the day.

Anyway, here’s some stuff.

To everyone who’s been along for the ride — It’s been a slice.

Thanks for reading.

This is as bad as that professional hockey team in Ottawa

We’ve kind of beaten the Senator-At-Large thing to death now with yesterday’s blog and today’s story on it in the hard-copy, tree-killing version of our product.

But it’s easily the biggest issue of this voting period so far. All of the candidates ran under the assumption students would have seven votes. As someone eloquently put it to me on Monday, the senatorial candidates “didn’t just have the rug pulled out from under them — they were pushed off the cliff.”

I don’t really like the idea of running as a slate, which a number of the candidates did. I mean, you should be running for yourself, not using your Facebook clout to help out your friends. It’s entirely unfair to someone from outside the USC who wants to run for Senator-At-Large and can’t benefit from the existing relationships between candidates. But they’re just playing the game. Don’t hate the player, and so on.

So we’ll see how this affects things. If anything it will be interesting to see how the votes shake out between Michael Ciniello, Adam Fearnall and Alysha Li who ran a “joint campaign.” Is the one who gets the most votes the best candidate? Or maybe just the one who pulled the most weight during their joint campaign? Or the one with the best Facebook page?

Here’s a hint: it’s likely the third option.

I spoke to current senator-at-large Pat Searle at length about this yesterday. He was clearly upset not only that this decision came down so ridiculously late but also that senators were getting the short end of the stick once again.

Currently, senatorial and Board of Governors candidates are not reimbursed by the USC for their campaigns like other candidates are. That means that anyone running to be a part of one of the two highest governing bodies of the university are doing it completely out of their own pocket, while faculty councilors who may not even show up to USC meetings are reimbursed for their expenses.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me now and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me two years ago when I interviewed former USC VP-University Affairs Jacqueline Cole for this article. Back then she thought the policy should change:

“I think that [the USC] hasn’t figured out what we want our relationship to be with students who are involved with the Senate and BOG,” Cole said.

“The USC plays a key role in advocating for students to get involved in university governance and if we want to take ourselves seriously I think that we need to support students who want to get involved.”

Two years later, nothing has changed and Searle is echoing Cole’s statements on his Fuss on the Bus blog and to me yesterday when he had this to say about it:

“I think something needs to change because if this is how senators are being treated I don’t think people will keep on running. It’s certainly already eliminating students who can’t afford to run. The USC will give you a loan but you have to pay back the loan at some point. There isn’t an option where you can just run a free campaign. Unless you’re really popular and you have a Facebook group that everyone wants to be a part of, you’re out of luck.”

It would be a major win if the USC could lobby someone to change this and a major fail if they simply continue talking to the media about it and never acting on it.

Listen, you can complain to me all day about it, but I can only publicize your thoughts. I can’t actually make anything happen. But you can, elected USC representatives. At least try.

Another interesting tidbit from my conversation with Searle yesterday — he said now that students only get a vote a piece for Senator-At-Large he wouldn’t be surprised if the last place finisher in the race had less than 10 votes. We’ll have to wait until tonight to see if he’s right, but a result like that has got to sting.

Some biting criticism

So since we’re getting all worked up here, let’s talk about the Spoke and the Wave shall we?

I’m a big fan of the quality food sold at both establishment, and while I may gripe at the prices, I’ll always be going back because it’s honestly the best food available in the UCC where I work for about 14 hours every day.

But here’s a question — when did USC president become synonymous with restaurant proprietor?

It seems that every election season the candidates bring forward their fantastic ideas about how to fix The Spoke and The Wave. Meals for $3, Spoke to go, moving Rick McGhie nights back upstairs, turning The Spoke into a lounge then back into a bar then back into a lounge and then morphing the two into a bounge. The list goes on so long that it hurts my soul.

At the media forum on Friday, USC VP-Finance Ely Rygier was wise enough to raise the fact that this year the Spoke and the Wave are $10,000 in the black after suffering through an absolutely awful period financially the last two years.

I never wish to be in the shoes of the presidential candidates when they’re sitting up on that stage being grilled by USCers and media alike. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. But this was the one instance where I wish I was, so that I could answer Ely’s question of why the Spoke and Wave had such a massive turnaround.

Luckily I have a blog. So I can answer it here in four words — leave your managers alone.

There is a distinct difference between this year’s USC student executive and previous year’s executives and how they deal with the Spoke/Wave. And none of the candidates identified it. They leave Jeff Armour alone.

Jeff Armour, for those of you who don’t know, is the food and beverage manager for the USC, meaning he runs the show at The Spoke and Wave. If you ever see him sometime, you should shake his hand and say thanks for providing students with such excellent service.

Armour will hate that I’m naming him here because he’s that noble of a guy but it’s just too difficult to watch amateur politicians tell him how to do his job. I mean, where do you get the nerve?

His 15 years of experience in the restaurant industry tells me that Armour might know a thing or two about making a restaurant or bar successful.

Never mind that the Spoke and Wave also have Mark Leonard as head chef, the same Mark Leonard that Salari incorrectly referred to as “Jeff Armour’s boss” at Friday’s debate. A fact Andrew Forgione did not know enough about to refute him on.

Listen, we don’t expect the candidates to know everything. That would be unreasonable. But in turn, the candidates should not try to address everything as if they know everything. That’s equally as unreasonable.

It’s perfectly fine to answer a question by saying “You know what? This isn’t in my wheelhouse. I have no experience what-so-ever in that field. That’s why the USC has full-time managers with mountains of experience on these subjects. So that I don’t have to pretend I know everything.”

The best answer to Ely’s question was “Jeff Armour.” And none of the candidates said it.

Odds and Ends

• David Basu Roy has footage of a spoken word he performed at The Spoke last week. No word of a lie, I saw Basu Roy doing karaoke at The Spoke Tuesday night. Say what you will about the guy, he is a man of the people.
• Meanwhile the Andrew Forgione team checks in with a rip off of that Google search commercial that I vaguely remember from a Super Bowl a couple years back. It’s nothing earth shattering but it is well done and polished —thanks to YouTube — like most of Forgione’s campaign. It certainly can’t hurt his chances.
• The Gazette has some of the best damn photographers on this campus and we’ll be featuring some of their exemplary campaign photography later today. Keep your eyes peeled for that one
• Again, thanks to everyone who read, loved, hated, tolerated and commented on Blog the Vote. It wouldn’t have been worth it without you.

Day Fifteen — Panic!

Corey Stanford/Gazette

Okay, Western. Let’s all just take a deep breath.

Solid Twitter panic last night. I was thoroughly impressed. I mean, you could’ve done better. Maybe next time try rioting or razing some buildings or something. But the impulsive, panicked reaction online to the launch of the 2011 edition of the University Students’ Council election was a nice touch.

But frankly, if I was running for senator-at-large, I might have been a little frenzied myself. Here’s the deal.

When the keenest of the keen went online to vote in the USC elections early this morning, they found they were only able to vote for one senator-at-large. Seven senators are elected to the position and traditionally students are able to cast seven votes.

But according to an e-mail from Chief Returning Officer Adam Smith sent to all nine senator-at-large candidates that was obtained by Blog the Vote, Smith was instructed by University Secretariat Erika Hegedues on Monday to reduce the number of candidates students can vote for from seven to one. This despite the fact that all senatorial candidates were asked to approve the following ballot Monday morning:

While Smith is the CRO of most of the USC elections, Hegedues is in charge of both the Senate and Board of Governors elections and has final say in both those matters.

Here’s an excerpt from Smith’s e-mail to the senatorial candidates:

“Earlier today, I received a phone call from Erika informing me that I was to change the number of Senators-at-Large candidates a student can vote for from 7 to 1. She assured me this is the way it has always been done and that IT would be taking care of the reprogramming of the ballot. Again, let me stress that UWO administers these elections, not the USC.

The ballot I sent you for review was what we had planned on using up until I received this phone call. Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to change anything at this time.

That being said, we will be looking into it again in the morning. This does not mean it will be changed. If anything does, I will inform you immediately.”

It may not seem like the biggest issue from the outside looking in, until you realize that some of the senatorial candidates ran as a slate. Candidates Michael Ciniello, Alysha Li and Adam Fearnall all ran a joint campaign anticipating that students would have seven votes and be able to vote all three of them in. Now, with the rug pulled out from under them mere hours before the voting period begins, the senatorial candidates are feeling misled. Ciniello had this to say about the matter via e-mail late last night:

“Some heads up would have been nice, at least for campaigning purposes. I entered into a joint campaign with two other candidates because we had a similar vision and set of ideas for the senate next year. Now that only one vote can be cast, the possibility that the majority of our supporters votes will go to only one of us looms overhead. We all would have done a lot more individual campaigning if we knew this was going to happen. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.”

Meanwhile, Vivian Leung, another candidate for senator-at-large, told me late last night that she had also been telling voters that they would not be forced to choose simply one candidate:

“It affects anyone, including myself, who has been telling voters that they don’t need to make a choice between one and another candidate because we would love to work together and would appreciate getting voted in together.”

The principle of giving every student just one vote isn’t the issue here. The playing field is still level and, if anything, the best candidates would get in because students who aren’t informed on all of the senatorial candidates wouldn’t simply be picking sixth and seventh names at random to fill their ballots.

What’s at issue here is that the senatorial candidates ran their campaigns under the assumption that voters would not have to pick just one of them. That severely changes the dynamic of their campaign. If students were only going to receive one vote, that should have been determined before the campaign period ever began — not a few hours before the polls open.

I’m sure we’ll find out more about this on Tuesday but as of now it appears that Smith won’t be able to do anything about this and students will only have one senatorial vote this year. With polls closing Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. and more and more students voting with every passing hour, there are certainly a lot of senatorial candidates out there feeling like they got the raw end of the deal.

So that said, it’s a big day I guess

Because the elections issue of the Gazette is out, of course. What — is there something else going on?

Oh yeah, that whole voting thing. When you’ve got a moment, do your part and first get informed and then vote.

I cannot stress this enough — don’t vote if you’re not getting informed first

How do you go about getting informed? As far as objective sources go, might I suggest today’s issue of the Gazette or Pat Searle’s Fuss on the Bus elections special as starting points. This blog ain’t bad either.

Or for platforms and information directly from the candidates, you can check out the respective websites for presidential candidates David Basu Roy, Andrew Forgione and Omid Salari.

Just please read something before you vote.

Really, that’s the most important thing today. Don’t just vote because you feel like you have to. Don’t just vote for the guy with the video you like the most. Don’t just vote for the hot one. Actually read up on the candidates, check out their platforms and get informed.

Boosting voter turnout would be great, but I’ll take a 20 per cent share of campus that is informed over a 50 per cent share of campus that just votes for the name they recognize any day of the week. Remember, this is the highest position on your student union — it’s a very big, important, influential role. Don’t just hand your vote to someone without doing your homework.

And don’t just brush up on the presidential elections either. Learn about the senatorial candidates and the board of governors candidates as well. The USC representatives on the board of governors sit on the highest governing body of the university. It’s a big freakin’ deal.

But if you’re not going to get involved, that’s cool. Just don’t vote. You’re not helping.

Fuhgeddab-audit

Nyssa Kuwahara/Gazette -- What the Ron Swanson is going on here? You'll just have to pick up tomorrow's election issue to find out.

We got a peek at the apparently only partially completed USC elections audit this morning. There’s nothing earth shattering in it, but definitely a couple points of interest.

It goes into greater detail about the demerit points leveled on Andrew Forgione and David Basu Roy. These are all facts we confirmed here at Blog the Vote last week before anyone from the elections committee was willing to talk about it but now we have the official USC word on it so that’s something.

On Basu Roy’s 15 point penalty

“Basu Roy knowingly printed unapproved posters that violate the USC’s Advertising Oversight Committee’s policies. […] Basu Roy distributed this unapproved material around campus.”

And on Forgione’s four point penalty:

“Forgione attended the CSA, a USC ratified club, meeting the week before nominations closed. At this meeting, a member of his campaign team solicited support from the club.”

EnviroWestern also chips in their environmental audit which is based on the receipts provided by the candidates. According to them, Omid Salari has by far the most environmentally sound campaign, using just 55 sheets of paper and 659 litres of water to create said paper. Now, that could partially be due to the fact that his campaign didn’t really get off the ground until the beginning of week two. Plus, the report seems to indicate he hasn’t submitted all of his receipts yet. Regardless, they’re still impressive figures considering the numbers his opponents put up.

Forgione’s campaign used 505 sheets of paper and 12,672 litres of water to create the paper. That’s a lot but it pales in comparison to the 700 sheets of paper and 21,176 litres of water that the audit claims Basu Roy used. Basu Roy, need I remind you, specializes in environmental engineering so it’s certainly surprising to see him at the top of the list. When I asked him about it Monday afternoon, he said EnviroWestern only took into account the physical sheets of paper he used and not the type of ink which he feels has a greater impact that straight sheets of paper. Safe to say, he doesn’t think EnviroWestern’s report was as in-depth as it could have been.

The final portion of the audit takes on campaign finances and is apparently still incomplete. We’ll see what it looks like once all the receipts are submitted, but it’s still interesting to see where things stand at this point:

Couple things of note here. Forgione’s trendy reusable bags were the costliest investment of the period at over $600. Salari’s balloons came close, running him $580 when you factor in the outrageous price of helium tank rentals these days.

It’s safe to say Forgione got the better investment out of his $600, as he was able to produce a massive amount of bags which students can get some practical use out of after the election period. Meanwhile, Salari’s balloons have been a continuous nuisance for him, as they were constantly getting damaged or floating to the top of the UCC atrium, as helium-filled balloons tend to do.

Basu Roy, meanwhile, has spent the least to date of the three candidates yet has also run the least environmentally friendly campaign so far, according to the audit. That’s quite a feat. He avoided spending a large chunk of his budget on something elaborate like his competitors did, which is noble considering its student money he would be spending. But at the same time he was also the least buzz-worthy candidate of the campaign period.

We’re apparently going to be getting more information on the candidates’ campaign financials shortly so stay tuned for that. But as things stand now, I would say Andrew Forgione has easily spent his money the most effectively. He’s utilized his entire budget and run by far the most interesting, engaging campaign. Call it formulaic or establishment-based, but it definitely reached a lot of people. And in a popularity contest like this, is that not what’s most vital to getting elected?

Today in videos

• A shaven, nicely dressed and eloquent Omid Salari shows his professional side in his latest video effort. Is he bowing to his critics that say he’s unprofessional? Perhaps. But it’s probably something that he had to do considering his spiraling reputation during the campaign. And he makes an excellent point. It’s ironic that his campaign and candour during it has been called into question despite the fact he’s the only candidate to not receive a single demerit point.
• Also, this somehow didn’t make it into the blog last week, but here’s the video from CHRW’s Minute to win it experiment which offered all candidates running in USC elections an opportunity to plug themselves on air for a minute. It was tremendously underutilized by the candidates, most of whom didn’t bother to show up despite being told about it at their all-candidates meeting. Of course, all three presidential candidates did their part to ruin the project’s legitimacy, with David Basu Roy performing a spoken word thing, Andrew Forgione rapping and Omid Salari taking off his shirt.

Finally, no idea how I missed this one either, but my man Pat Searle wrote just a fantastic blog post last week about the hard-working students who run for senatorial and board of governor positions on their own buck with no reimbursement from the USC. A situation that leaves many feeling helpless:

“The lack of funding is really felt when you are running an at-large election, or cross-constituency election, when you can’t just rely on your experience within your own constituency. Without funding, you are left to print your own posters and bag-tags and rave cards or whatever, at your own expense. You feel a little helpless, and honestly, who can blame you?”

Day Fourteen — The final push

Even from a distance, you can never miss David Basu Roy's boots

As I re-read it at 4:17 this morning, I’ve realized that this particular edition of Blog the Vote is rather ranty. Fair warning — thin-skinned individuals should tread carefully.

But you can excuse me — we’re all getting to the ends of our respective leashes, aren’t we?

Maybe it would be different if there were more candidates or a more uncertain race, but this whole thing has just gotten so tedious the last few days. Even when talking to the candidates, they’ve all told me in one way or another that they’d like to pull off one last campaign stunt before the voting period but that they just can’t find the motivation.

Assuming they’re being truthful, I just can’t blame them. Anyone who is going to care about this thing has already gotten involved in some fashion. The rest are tuning it out and getting on with their lives. So why bother doing anything dramatic when you can simply do a traditional push on Monday and rally the troops you have.

And that’s not to say the candidates are getting lazy. No, quite the contrary.

Props to Andrew Forgione — or one of his 17 campaign managers — for keeping his blog updated. Respect to Omid Salari for frequently commenting on this blog and engaging voters through nontraditional forums. Big ups to David Basu Roy for not only making regular appearances at Rick McGhie’s but staying late as well, engaging voters until the bitter end.

No, this is just to say that the campaign has taken on a different form in the last few days. A less flashy, showy, gimmicky form. Instead it’s a more grounded, realistic, laid back form. And it’s that trend that truly endears me to these three. They’re not egomaniacs. They’re good people and they know how to read the campus climate.

So on this the final day before voting begins — the final push as they call it — don’t look for anything too surprising.

Wouldn’t be a Blog the Vote entry without hatin’ on debatin’

The debates are over. Done. Finito.

Personally, I appreciate that because I don’t have to go to them anymore. But I think the candidates also appreciate it because they were getting rather redundant by the end of the week. In the span of 24 hours on Thursday and Friday there were three presidential debates, two of which were held in the same building and three of which were all attended by the same people. I get that Politically Incorrect and the media forum are traditions and it’s been done this way for years. But I love nothing more than to dispose of traditions that are silly, cumbersome and a nuisance. Traditions needn’t still be enacted because ‘it’s been that way forever, why would you ever change it?’

So maybe next year we can ditch one or two of the debates and let the candidates actually, you know, campaign. I’m sure all three of them would have appreciated more time to get around campus and actually speak to constituents instead of spending much of their time dancing through a mine field of ornery USC questions asked by voters who already have their minds made up.

That said, the two best debates were by far Thursday night’s Real USC Presidential Debate and Friday’s media forum. That’s likely because they both afforded the candidates opportunities to go after each other which is where we saw some of the most interesting moments of the campaign period.

Just take Friday, for instance. Forgione was visibly frustrated with Salari’s constant interruptions. Salari called an audience member drunk. And Basu Roy landed one of the better quips of the campaign, responding to Salari’s assertion that all you need to do to earn a good grade is attend class and do homework by saying: “And so the ethics student meets the engineering student.”

That was pretty good.

But that also reflected a certain unruliness that was present in Friday’s debate which was likely because the candidates were given free rein to jump on each other with no semblance of order. Moderator Dan Moulton had it right Thursday night, asking the candidates to raise a hand when they wished to rebut. This is still a political debate — not a professional wrestling podcast.

The best forum for a USC presidential debate is somewhere in between the uptight, over-controlled question and answer sessions we saw earlier in the campaign period and the lawlessness of Friday’s media forum. Thursday night’s Real USC Presidential Debate was the closest and Adam Fearnall, Dan Moulton and the rest of the affiliates team that helped organize it deserve some serious kudos.

Those pompous knobs at the Gazette

I think my man StuartAtGazette put it best Friday when David Basu Roy answered a question about why campus media wasn’t involved in his platform:

Win.

To whoever the loons are that keep asking why the candidates didn’t put anything about campus media in their platforms — please stop. You’re not helping.

In fact, the candidates not including campus media in their platforms is a tremendous endorsement of the quality of the Gazette, CHRW and Big Purple Couch.

This has been a great year for us media types at Western. There isn’t one entity within campus media which is of poor quality, irrelevant or widely ignored by students. That’s something we couldn’t say that at this time last year.

And here’s the thing — this crop of presidential candidates is actually exceedingly bright. Know why? Because they were smart enough to leave us out of their platforms.

Every year some wisenheimer candidate has a great idea about writing a ‘from the desk of the president’ column in the Gazette or e-mailing the Gazette to students every day or some other such nonsense. None of it ever happens. Unless we take the candidate’s e-mail subscription idea and achieve it in five minutes while having our morning coffee to prove a point like we did last year.

I won’t speak for the other media outlets because I don’t know enough about them — of course, they both do a fantastic job and have their own forums to pump their tires — but I can speak for the Gazette which is the nation’s largest and only daily campus newspaper. Literally the only student-run newspaper in the country that does what we do. Why is the USC not more proud of that?

We are circulated 11,000 times daily and we get countless thousands more hits online. That’s not to mention the fact our videos are the most viewed campus media videos at Western by a mile and three of our editors were recently listed among the best emerging journalists in Canada.

We are not just a good student newspaper ­— we are exemplary. We love our friends at The Ubyssey and The Eyeopener and especially the Ryerson Review of Journalism which puts out some of the best student-penned features you will ever read. But the experience of working at a daily newspaper like the Gazette is unmatched on any other campus in the country.

So punk, what exactly would you like the USC presidential candidates to tell us to do?

Odds and ends

• My man Pat Searle proves Arden Zwelling isn’t the only guy who can go on for an obscenely long amount of time about an election no one cares about, with this colossal edition of Fuss on the Bus. There are 48 action-packed minutes of USC elections coverage in there so make sure you have a comfortable seat. As someone who watched the whole thing, I can tell ya it’s worth every minute.
• Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood — who is refreshingly un-MIT in person — has been checking in over at the MIT Zine blog with this report from when the presidential candidates spoke to the MITSC and these impressions from the Real USC Presidential Debate Thursday evening.
• Speaking of an MITer who serves as the editor in chief of a campus publication, if you haven’t read Gazette fearless leader Stuart A. Thompson’s response to comments from last week’s blog, you need to do so immediately.
• We’re all about honestly here at Blog the Vote, so I won’t lie to you and tell you that Big Purple Couch is not simply the mouthpiece of the USC. Criticism and analysis are simply not in their wheelhouse. But one thing they do impressively well is elections night coverage. And they made a wise move bringing in our man Matt Ryan as part of their crack team which plugs their election night special here.

Speaking of objectivity…

It’s funny — last week I was told by two different people that this blog is biased towards Andrew Forgione and Saturday another individual told me it was biased towards Omid Salari.

So what do you take from that?

Here’s the thing. I write about what’s newsworthy. Period. I don’t have any responsibility to give the candidates equal coverage or any biases toward one of these three men who I have gotten to know over the past two weeks.

If they aren’t doing something interesting, they probably won’t end up in the blog. Which is why if anyone has gotten the short end of the stick in this space, it’s David Basu Roy. But, frankly, Basu Roy hasn’t done anything particularly newsworthy since the first few days of the campaign period. I can’t make him do interesting things. And I can only dissect his website and videos so much.

So when you’re gearing up to get all 20th century journalism and scorn me for being biased, just remember what this blog is all about.

Day Eleven — What happened? I blacked out

Nyssa Kuwahara/Gazette

There’s only 100 or so hours left until we can vote on this thing and stop thinking about it forever.

Just focus on that when you look at all this USC madness and wonder if mutually assured destruction ain’t so bad.

We’re turning the corner towards the final stretch. Let’s just power through.

What a difference a couple hours makes, eh?

The Politically Incorrect session at The Spoke on Thursday was mostly shrugged off by the amassed students just trying to eat their CLTs in peace. It did see a whopping three audience questions — one of which was boxers or briefs. Meanwhile two hours later, the “Real USC Presidential Debate,” organized by the affiliate colleges, was buzzing. The turnout was so good that it was standing room only in The Great Hall at something called Huron — I believe it’s an old, wooden ship…

We knew it would be solid going in. But now, after the fact, I have no issue saying it was the best debate of this election period.

Dan Moulton was an able moderator, the audience behaved themselves for the most part, and we finally got a chance to see the candidates challenge each other.

You can usually tell who the front runner is by who is most frequently targeted at a debate. So it was no surprise that both David Basu Roy and Omid Salari went after Andrew Forgione early and often.

I thought Forgione stood his ground fairly well, even taking some surprisingly direct shots at the other candidates, like Salari for his tact during the campaign and Basu Roy for his greenhouse project which Forgione called “incredibly infeasible in general.”

In earlier “debates” — I guess debate is just catchier than ‘publicly elaborate on your platform’ — Forgione was a lot more timid and soft spoken, shying away from taking too strong of a stand. But as the campaign wears on he’s showing more of an edge and carrying a bit more of a chip on his shoulder.

Maybe it’s a response to the recent veiled — and not so veiled — attacks from his competitors. Maybe he feels like he has something to prove since he has been labeled by many as the establishment candidate. Maybe he’s just getting a bit short as the campaign wears on.

Regardless, Forgione has really imposed his will lately. It’s a welcome change.

If you can’t Tweet ‘em, join ‘em

One of the more innovative features of the debate was that it exclusively — except for one lone paper submission — accepted audience questions via Twitter.

I wasn’t as against the Twitter questions as some. 94 per cent of the people in that room had Twitter and if you didn’t you could write your question down and hand it in.

Allowing Dan Moulton to field the questions first and decide which were reasonable was a good way of stopping question askers from stealing the show or asking mindless, redundant questions. I mean, it’s nice to know what kind of animal the candidates would compare themselves too. If you’re four years old.

The Mackie-vellian Candidate

Easily the most vicious question of the night asked the candidates to identify the current USC executive board member they felt was doing the best and worst job. Yikes.

Here’s how they answered, in order of who spoke first to last:

Man, where to start with this one.

You could argue it’s an endorsement for this year’s board, considering three different board members were nominated as doing the best job. The board can be pleased that it wasn’t tough for the candidates to find a choice and that there wasn’t just one board member who stood out above the rest.

It couldn’t have been easy for Justin Mackie to hear his name twice on the wrong side of this question but he was definitely an easy target considering the constant outrage over clubs. He’s unlucky in the sense that the clubs issue has been a big one this year and one that all the candidates want to reform. Naming him simply led them nicely into restating one of their platform points.

And yeah — Salari refused to name a worst candidate. He really should have answered the question and he was probably the best suited to answer it considering his role as speaker of the USC where he works very closely with the board.

Of course, this could also mean that he had friendships on the board he didn’t want to scorn. But that’s never really been Salari’s style. He hasn’t once hesitated to criticize the USC until now. Which makes the move interesting and difficult to explain.

In the end, it hurts him that he didn’t answer the question. Especially since the easiest answer, as Pat Searle pointed out after the debate, would have been the man he’s aiming to replace, Mike Tithecott. Not because Tithecott has done a particularly poor job, but because every candidate would surely say they aim to do a better job than the person they’re replacing.

Always ask questions

Friday will see the media forum at noon in the UCC Atrium.

Representatives from the Gazette, CHRW and Big Purple Couch will be lobbing questions at the candidates in the final (mercifully) debate before the election. There will be questions from the audience as well so come out and get your super important problems addressed. Or don’t, it really doesn’t matter in the long run.

What would be nice, however, would be for some clubs or organizations or miscellaneous groups from campus to come out and ask some of the questions that don’t normally get asked. Candidates can prepare their answers for questions about mental health services, faculty strikes, catastrophic monster attacks and the like well in advance, but it’s the questions from left field that really show us what kind of candidates we’re dealing with here.

For instance, last year current CHRW news and spoken word director and former USC presidential candidate Ashley Bushfield targeted Mike Tithecott with a question about the availability of tampons in the UCC. She asked him why he was campaigning for two-play toilet paper in The Spoke and ignoring the fact tampons aren’t made available in the same washrooms. Tithecott’s reaction was priceless and it gave a rare glimpse of a candidate actually thinking on their feet when pressed with a challenging question.

We need more of that.

We so rarely get to see these candidates actually put on the spot. They’ve spent hours preparing for all topics and know the strengths and weaknesses of their platforms inside and out. But the job of USC President is anything but predictable and the ability to think quickly on your feet and come up with solutions to problems on the spot is incredibly undervalued.

Day Ten — Dog Days

Corey Stanford/Gazette

So this happened.

His name is Mathew Bogdanovski and Omid Salari swears he didn’t put him up to it.

“I did not encourage him to do this, it was all his own initiative,” Salari said Wednesday night. “I’m blown away. It’s completely unbelievable the support I’m getting.”

Bogdanovski stood in the middle of the University Community Centre Wednesday afternoon, plastered in anti-censorship, pro-Salari literature. He had a sign up sheet on his back where people could leave their names and e-mails. It attracted quite a crowd and it was entirely unprecedented.

It’s undeniable that Salari’s unorthodox campaign and following is having a profound effect on campus. Whether he’s being endorsed on DC++, suspending a yellow balloon above UC Hill or swearing and ranting at debates, Salari has completely turned this race on its head.

He’s flown in the face of his critics — myself included — continuing to up the ante with every passing day. While his tactics are sometimes bizarre and other times juvenile, you can’t deny that they’re attracting considerable attention.

Triggering #Forgibombs on Twitter is one thing. But it doesn’t even come close to the reach of Salari’s unconventional tactics. Add that to Salari’s aggressive performance at debates and it looks like we’ve got one hell of a candidate.

Grinding out the dog days

It’s weird to be talking about dog days in this, a two-week election period, but we are undeniably upon them. It’s been ten days since we started this craziness and the whole thing has grown rather bothersome. Everyone’s tired. Everyone’s cranky. Creativity is running dry.

The platforms have been dissected and challenged beyond the point of reason. The candidates have answered the same questions about environmentalism, clubs and mental health services ad nauseam. And even the usually antagonistic commenters on this blog can’t find the motivation to call me a knob anymore.

It would be nice if the candidates could spark some interest in the race before Monday’s traditional final push. They’re trying — but it seems like yet another campaign video or pushing some snow around on UC Hill unfortunately just doesn’t do it. Even the Bogdanovski stunt was apparently not initiated by a candidate.

It’s not easy to inspire student voters. Some would say impossible. But there has to be one last great idea out there, just waiting for a candidate to stumble upon it.

Endorsements

So the Western Libertarians have endorsed Omid Salari as their candidate for president. As far as I know they’re the first to publicly endorse someone — alert me to others in the comments — but I imagine the various endorsements will begin to roll in as this week goes on.

Which brings me to a question of some debate around these parts — should the Gazette endorse a candidate?

To make it clear, we would never endorse a candidate unless the vast majority of the editorial board agreed that individual was the best choice for president. Three years ago the endorsement of Stephen Lecce was an easy one to make. He was head and shoulders above the other candidates and everyone in our office believed he would do a great job. He would go on to win. The year before that, however, the Gazette endorsed Chris Reynolds who would end up losing the election.

Two years ago, with six candidates to choose from, the office was relatively split between a few choices. Even though Emily Rowe’s victory was easy to predict, few were actually willing to endorse her for the job over the competition. The same could be said about last year when Mike Tithecott was clearly the favourite among the USC but didn’t have majority support within our office.

Some feel the Gazette shouldn’t even endorse a candidate, considering our apparently wide-ranging influence on campus. It’s funny — when it’s convenient for people, they complain that we have too much influence. But when we speak out against an issue that some disagree with, the same folks will turn around and say we don’t have any sway on campus.

Some within our office even, including StuartAtGazette, don’t feel like we should endorse a candidate because not enough members of our office — much like campus in general — are engaged with the USC elections. Outside of our front office and our news section, interest and knowledge of the USC is rather limited.

Then again, who at this school has been following the race closer than us? Even if only 8-10 of us know the ins and outs of all the candidates and their platforms, surely that group can offer a better perspective on who the best candidate is than a partisan group or organization on campus.

Some have also raised the issue that there are students on this campus who will simply vote for whoever the Gazette tells them too. Many thought that was the case when Lecce was elected after our endorsement. Of course, Reynolds earned our endorsement the year prior and lost to Tom Stevenson so what does that tell ya?

Whatever our influence, it’s common practice for a newspaper to endorse a candidate and I’d personally like to see us at least have the discussion. I don’t care if our editorial board has to spend hours locked in a room trying to talk over the UCC construction sounds, we should emerge with a candidate to endorse. Even a backhanded endorsement would be welcome, like this one for George Smitherman which is less about the quality of the chosen candidate and more about the ineptness of the rest of the field.

Not endorsing a candidate because we don’t like any of them or can’t reach a consensus is a cop out. One of the candidates is going to be president. It’s not like we can endorse some ideal candidate not in the race. You need to measure the candidates against their competition, not against the ideal. The best of a bunch of knobs is still the best option.

I fear the backlash over endorsing someone would be outrageous. But I think it’s something we should do. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Do not miss this

A Real USC Presidential Debate will take place tonight at The Great Hall at Huron, which I’m informed is in fact not that room in the UCC basement. Feelings hurt easily FTW!

This will be an actual debate with discussion between the candidates and opportunities afforded for them to rebut each other. Big ups to Adam Fearnall et al. for organizing the event which will be moderated by former USC executive board member Dan Moulton.

Immediately following the debate, the candidates will head to the Gazette office where they will participate in the Gazette’s skills competition, which yes, we are doing again this year. Events will include a sobriety test, an unnecessarily hard and specific pop quiz, a game of twister, a tricycle obstacle course and a wet t-shirt contest.

Wait — what?

Okay, not exactly the wet t-shirt contest you were probably thinking of. We’ll be dunking the candidates’ campaign shirts in water, freezing them and then making them race against each other to unravel the shirt and put it on.

Yeah, it sounds kind of weird and pointless to me too but I trust the Gazette’s crack news team which organized these shenanigans so we’ll see how things shake out. If anything, Salari will likely do something silly, we’ll take a picture of it and then it’ll all be worth it.

Day Nine — Your days are numbered, dancers

David Basu Roy, hob nobbin' with a couple USC big wigs and showin' a little chest. Who says this guy doesn't have flash?

It’s funny the things you see when you’re walking home from campus at midnight.

There I was, hiking home with MeaganAtGazette after another 14 hour day when we saw around 20-some diligent Forgionians (how long till that’s hashtaged on Twitter?) armed with snow shovels furiously digging away at University College hill in order to make some sort of snow-based campaign advertisement.

Solid move, I say. Like David Basu Roy said in the comments section yesterday, “That’s what campaigning is all about – if one candidate finds a creative way to campaign before the others, power to them.”

It’s another instance of a candidate finding an innovative way to squeeze around the campaign rules. The Board of Governors may have limited the sizes and locations of signs, but they didn’t say anything about the snow other than the fact you can’t colour it.

For the past few years UC Hill has been the site of some of the biggest, most attention-grabbing signs of the campaign. With size restrictions, this year was supposed to be a tad more refined. But since we’ve seen around a gazillion centimeters of snow in beautiful London this winter, this was bound to happen. Luckily for Forgione, it seems like the snow is going to be here for, oh I don’t know, ever.

It’s hard not to like the creativity this election season. While the University Students’ Council and Board of Governors took great strides to limit the candidates, the byproduct has been an inspired vigor in trying to find inventive ways to circumvent the rules. Salari’s DC++ advertising campaign is a new one this year and brings Salari into a domain that is entirely unregulated. Forgione’s snow-made sign is another inventive — and incredibly eco-friendly — way to get around some of the restrictions on the hill. Basu Roy has Rick McGhee wearing his shirt so he must be doing something right.

Possible problems? Well, Forgione’s snow-scape is incredibly susceptible to vandalism. Or just wind blowing the snow around. Or a flock of Canadian geese setting up shop in the area and using it as their own personal outhouse.

Yeah, probably the geese.

The surprisingly large Basu Roy contingent

It was good to see David Basu Roy’s camp out in full force at The Spoke Monday afternoon for a coffee house event. Basu Roy actually has a fairly sizable team when they all turn out to something, one that can rival Forgione’s blue-shirted followers. The problem is that presence hasn’t always extended to the UCC lately, where Forgione’s team is constantly buzzing around. Maybe Basu Roy’s campaign philosophy simply isn’t as aggressive as Forgione’s. Or maybe his campaign team is more spread out across campus, whereas Forgione’s seems to hub around the UCC. But the number of green shirts in The Spoke Monday was startling.

Basu Roy has the tools to run a smooth campaign like Forgione’s. Maybe now that he’s past the growing pains of the first week, we’ll really see him come on strong. Then again, as Salari begins to surge after launching his campaign late and Forgione continues to stay the course of being everywhere, Basu Roy may need to do something big before next week to reassert his presence in the race.

It’s a dance dance revolution

I’ve already committed my vote to my man Matt Ryan who is going to make just a fantastic USC President.

But if I wasn’t backing MR. Western I’d have to think long and hard about Andrew Forgione who last night dropped a #Forgibomb of information on his website, tackling an issue that is incredibly close to my heart.

Forgione goes on for 500 words or so, reiterating his support of clubs at Western and his desire to make it easier for clubs to book rooms, plan events and do other clubby things. Big whoop.

But then he makes freakin’ history:

“Plus, I’m sure we would all love it if the dance clubs and various groups that use the UCC space to practice whatever they may be practicing for, had their own private area to practice and rehearse without anyone impeding them.”

Wah-bam!

I know what Forgione meant to say was ‘the dance clubs that use UCC space to get in everyone’s way with their pointless body gyrations’ — but it’s all good. The point is, he plans on expelling them from the UCC permanently, hopefully to some sort of island somewhere with no escape. That, or an eternity of the Monday morning shift cleaning the washrooms in Saugeen would also be accepted.

Listen, if dancing is your thing that’s great. I think that’s fan-freakin-tastic. I understand that the USC hasn’t provided you with the necessary space to shake your assorted grove thangs, ba-donk-a-donks and the like. It’s a crying shame.

But getting to where I’m going is my thing. And most nights in the UCC I can’t do it because you’re grinding all up on each other all over the place. I urge whoever is elected — likely Matt Ryan — to put an end to this and provide these assorted dance crews, units and posses with space that doesn’t double as a main walking artery in the campus’ community centre.

I literally can’t wait for the dance troupe outrage in the comments section.

Odd and Ends

• A pair of letter writers penned some pretty good critiques of the presidential candidates in our opinions section yesterday, including one individual who is fed up of frivolous videos that have “nothing to do with anything the candidate will do to help students.” And another who keenly noticed that “as long as this whole election process continues to be a popularity contest where name recognition rules, the results won’t change.”
• Not sure what Senators do? Yeah me neither but they sure do sound important. Want a crash course? You could read this incredibly informative article written on the topic from the Gazette a couple years back. Or you could stroll down to the Huron Student Activiteis Centre Thursday afternoon at 3:00 where three Senator-at-Large candidates will be hosting a discussion session on the position they’re vying to hold. Take the opportunity and go learn about whatever it is that they do.
• There will be more videos — whether you like it or not. Omid Salari has another video or two coming down the pipe. Andrew Forgione will certainly release something. And the Big Purple Couch will be coming out with a video on trail sort of thing, where they make fun of the candidates videos, which is kind of like shooting fish in a teacup. Hilarity may or may not ensure.
• For a more, um, friendly take on the USC elections period, I have to recommend my man Pat Searle who continues to hit it out of the park with his running stream of elections coverage over at Fuss on the Bus. He was motoring around campus last week filming a USC elections special edition of his internet senatorial talk show — I guess our invitation was lost in the mail… — which we expect to see sometime later this week.
• The official USC elections website was updated recently with a new video and a bunch of information you got from the Gazette last week. It’s alright, I guess. I like the elections committee, they’re good people. But they’re not exactly “your number one non-partisan elections news source” as they’ve been advertising themselves. Why not? Because the only information you’re going to get from their website is pictures of the candidates, their campaign videos and links to their social media. Never mind the fact the Gazette has been publishing numerous in-depth articles from the campaign trail daily and leading the way on Twitter and online. Good thing no one votes in this thing, eh?
• Let me end by saying that it is an absolutely crock of dung that the presidential candidates have been banished to the basement of the UCC this week so that we can sell trashy posters in the UCC atrium. This is as relevant as the USC gets all year and we’re going to shove them out of the most highly-traveled artery on campus for a poster sale? Could we not have bought our Hangover movie posters some other week?

Omid++

Didn’t take long for us to get our hands on the first official screen shot of Omid Salari’s DC++ campaign. DC++, for those who don’t know, is an online file sharing  network used by most students at Western’s residences. It’s like LimeWire, the former Napster or Torrents but incredibly faster because it runs on a local area connection in the residences.

As promised, Salari has overtaken the title bar and the top of the chat screen with a ringing endorsement from the DC++ team. Salari apparently paid somewhere from $180-$200 for the exclusive rights to advertise on DC++.

A lot of first-years who normally would not be involved in the USC elections are going to be seeing his message every time they open their DC++ browser and if even a handful of them end up voting for Salari it has to be seen as a win. No other candidate can boast this kind of constant access to the university’s large crop of first year students.

The only issue for Salari is whether this is in violation of some vague portion of By-Law 2. The legality of DC++ is questionable. We’ll see how it shakes out but if Salari pulls this off without penalty it will be pretty huge for USC campaigning for years to come.

Day eight — Dropping the gloves

No extended intro today, folks. There’s just too much going on. We’ve got something nice to say about Huron, some never-before-seen campaigning from Omid Salari, a demerit point update and a couple other things as well. This blog is scraping 1,600 words and I’ve already pushed 700 more words to tomorrow’s entry. So let’s just dive in, shall we.

Sometimes dreams do come true.

Just a day after I griped about the lack of actual debate at the University Students’ Council debates, along comes the best news this campaign has yet to see.

Alright that’s a bit much. But my man Adam Fearnall — the president of the Huron University Students’ Council — did inform me that Huron will be hosting a debate this Thursday night, moderated by none other than former USC Vice President University Affairs Dan Moulton.

I won’t even make a bad joke here. This is really, really awesome.

While we always back the Gazette’s own Mike Hayes who did a fine job moderating Saturday’s debate, Moulton is also an excellent choice of moderator. Moulton knows the inner-workings of the USC having served on the board, he knows campaigns having run Emily Rowe’s successful presidential bid and he knows how to moderate a good debate having served as the speaker of Huron’s council.

But the biggest win here is the fact that the candidates will get to actually, you know, talk to each other and challenge one another on issues. It’s a novel idea, I know. But I think it could just work. Here’s the format:

-2 Open Questions from Moderator

- Pointed Questions from the Moderator

- Open Discussion Amongst Candidates

- Audience Questions

-A debate winner will be declared.

Personally, I don’t really need someone to be declared the winner of the debate. I’m pretty sure the audience members can make their own judgments and this shouldn’t be about winning or losing. No one’s opinions or views on issues are right or wrong — it’s politics. Declaring a winner or loser is extremely subjective and not really necessary to the political process.

But we’re going to get an actual debate, so we’ll just ignore that part and enjoy the rest of it which should be quite good. It’ll be really fun to watch the candidates actually take each other on topics and try to refute each other’s arguments.

Major, major props to Huron for making this happen. I cannot wait to see how this plays out.

So how’s this for creative campaigning.

Omid Salari, always keeping an eye out for an innovative campaign technique, has purchased the exclusive rights to advertise on DC++, the Western residence file sharing network.

Wait — what?

Yep, for the first time ever in USC elections history, a candidate has purchased the rights to advertise on an online file sharing service. Needless to say, this is not covered in By-Law 2 because no one has been crazy enough to think of it yet.

Salari apparently paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $180-$200 for the exclusive rights to DC++ and his advertising campaign on the service is said to include popup messages, hourly chat updates and an endorsement on the title bar.

Here at Blog the Vote we don’t endorse the illegal pirating of awesome, totally free digital content. But anyone who has lived in residence at Western knows just how much time is spent on this service, downloading music, movies, television shows and the like.

Advertising on DC++ is an incomparable method of reaching first-year students who are probably the most easily swayed of voters considering they’re unlikely to have ties on the USC. If every first-year student gets an engaging message from Omid Salari every time they open their DC++ it could be a seriously effective campaign tool for the presidential candidate.

But really, no one is entirely sure just how many first-years vote. According to Andrew Forgione, who I spoke to about this yesterday, statistics aren’t kept as to the divide in voters by year or faculty. So it’s really a gamble for Salari. It could pay off tremendously if he can mobilize first years. Of course, if first years are as docile, uninformed and apathetic as most think they are, it could be a colossal waste of money.

I’m not in residence so I can’t see Salari’s advertising, but if anyone does, please forward it our way so we can show the rest of campus what he’s up to.

A brief demerit update

Although Chief Returning Officer Adam Smith is not talking about the demerit situation due to a commitment to confidentiality, Blog the Vote rolled up its sleeves and did a little digging. Here’s what we found.

According to the man himself, Andrew Forgione — assessed four points for pre-campaigning — fell victim to an inexperienced team member. Prior to the campaign period, Forgione went to speak to the Chinese Students’ Association about the USC and did not mention his bid for the presidency. However, once he left the meeting, a member of his campaign team who was unfamiliar with By-Law 2 encouraged members of the club to vote for Forgione. Thus, the four point penalty. Forgione actually got off pretty easy as his penalty was reduced from 10 points to just four.

Basu Roy, on the other hand, has been assessed a much harsher penalty of 15 points for printing and posting un-approved campaign materials. According to his campaign team, he was reprimanded for using purple in his signage and the word ‘damn.’ Also according to his campaign team, Basu Roy asked InPrint to print the posters in black and white, but they instead printed them in colour. Basu Roy then put the posters up, purple and all, in the engineering building. According to his campaign team, Basu Roy is currently appealing the penalty.

In my books, Forgione should have gotten a little more for his indiscretion and Basu Roy should have gotten a little less. If Forgione is going to operate with such a vast team he should be held responsible for all of their actions. It’s his fault for not better educating his troops and he’s informed me that since the indiscretion his team has had a meeting to go over the dos and don’ts of the campaign trail. Meanwhile, Basu Roy clearly broke the rules and deserved to be punished but simply having the colour purple on his campaign sign doesn’t really warrant 15 points to me. But Smith has a point. Rules is rules — you gotta play by ‘em.

To read more on the demerits, check out our article on the situation from today’s paper.

Something I could do without

CHRW’s minute to win it went down in the UCC Atrium Monday afternoon. All three presidential candidates showed up and did their thing. Notable performances include Forgione busting out a freestyle rap and Salari taking his shirt off and touching his nipples. No I’m not kidding.

Listen, stepping out of your comfort zone and showing a little bit of personality with a rap is one thing. It’s silly but it doesn’t exactly devalue the electoral process, which is already pretty high school as it is. But not even in high school would someone do what Salari did in front of a CHRW camera on Monday. Salari’s striptease didn’t just border on distasteful, it crossed a line for me.

I like Salari’s willingness to try new things. I like that he can turn a debate on its head with powerful rhetoric. I like that he’s not afraid to display his affable uniqueness. But what exactly does taking off your shirt and touching your nipples accomplish other than shock value? Some of Salari’s ideas are innovative and great. But it seems like every so often he slips in one that just doesn’t make any sense. Maybe if he had a campaign team, someone could edit his more bizarre ideas.

The CHRW performance was completely adverse to Salari’s campaign promise to “not ____ around.” Simply put — it was silly, pointless and uncalled for.

And another thing

I know CHRW was excited about the minute to win it project and the elections committee advertised it to candidates heavily, pitching it at every all candidates meeting and including it on campaign literature. But the turnout Monday was less than stellar with only a handful of candidates making use of the opportunity.

Their loss, I suppose. I don’t really know why the candidates wouldn’t use this medium as a way to get their names out there. It sure as hell ain’t going to happen in this space.

But the real issue here is that the candidates are just as apathetic about all of this as the students. When your candidates can’t be bothered to spare a single minute of their day for some free publicity and advertising on campus media, something is seriously wrong. Voter apathy is one thing. But how can you expect voters to get interested in a race if the candidates show little to no interest themselves?

Why are there only a handful of councilors and senators who actually take the extra step to truly engage students?

Maybe Gazette managing editor Mike Hayes it right. Maybe it’s time to shrink this council so that only those who are truly interested in being active student politicians can win. Maybe it’s time to start thinking quality over quantity.

3:18 a.m. UPDATE: Ah man, this ruins my strong ending but what’re ya gonna do because we’ve got David Basu Roy’s campaign video. It’s really a roller coaster of emotions and ends in what looks to be a rather painful crowd hoist for ol’ elastic legs Dave. Unfortunately, the banana suit does not make an appearance.

8:53 a.m. UPDATE: And for those of you who are more hip hop inclined, Omid Salari has released a “USC gangsta rap” video. Rapping locations include a chair, a hallway and even a river. Andrew Forgione also utilized the increasingly popular urban musical phenomenon of rap to get his message across on Monday at CHRW’s minute to win it. So clearly the USC thinks that’s what you kids are into these days.

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.

Day Five — Demeritocracy

"The three of you are stranded on a desert island -- who do you eat first?"

I actually write this brief intro from the second University Students’ Council presidential “debate.” Not that we expect to have any sort of argument or discussion between the candidates. Heaven forbid. Let’s just make them answer questions about USC policy for four hours. But we’ll have more on that come Monday.

Anyway, it’s not noon yet, so we’re still calling this your morning dose of Blog the Vote.

Bad boys, bad boys

Adam Smith’s uncompromising fist of discipline came raining down on two candidates yesterday — one moreso than another. I know what you’re thinking — throw the damn book at these heartless cheaters. Well let’s just assess what they’re being accused of first.

Firstly, Andrew Forgione was assessed four demerit points for being in violation of By-Law 2 Section 11.01 — dunh dunh dunnnhhhh.

Yeah, I didn’t know what it was either. That’s why we look these things up:

“Candidates may not address executive or general meetings of USC or University recognized organizations prior to the start of campaigning, and must schedule meetings with executive members on their own initiative. The candidate may not solicit votes or support during consultative meetings.”

As it turns out, the crime Forgione has been accused of is “attending a meeting of a University-recognized club and solicit[ing] support” from said club. I don’t know what the club was — my guess is the juggling club — but here at Blog the Vote all suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Which Forgione likely was, but hey — it’s only four points. It’s not like he blew half of his allotted 30 demerit points on one infraction. That’d be awful.

What’s that? Oh… Well this is awkward.

Turns out David Basu Roy has also been accused of some less than exemplary actions over the first four days of the campaign as he was docked 15 points ­— !!! — for what the elections committee is calling a “violation of the rules of fair play for unsanctioned use of USC resources” and a “violation of the rules of campaigning for improper distribution of these campaign materials.”

To my extraordinarily limited and likely mistaken understanding, Basu Roy is being accused of printing unapproved signage at InPrint which registers as a double whammy of campaign indiscretions. Not only did he print an unapproved sign, he did it at a USC printing outlet with student money. Supposedly.

For Basu Roy, these points are near-crippling. He’s now halfway to disqualification from the race and his campaign budget will be lowered by $90. That may not seem like much considering he originally had a $1,500 stipend, but if he had already budgeted to spend most of that money, losing $90 off the top could alter his plans.

The biggest worry for him must be that there are still ten days until voting and a couple small slip ups could find himself disqualified from the race altogether. Basu Roy now has to tread very carefully as he goes forward.

Just to beat folks to the punch, some will make an argument that the USC is making an example out of the outsider Basu Roy. Not so, it says here. From my perspective, Chief Returning Officer Adam Smith has been doing an exemplary job thus far and I’m sure he had legitimate reasons to bring down these penalties.

Of course, I haven’t spoken to either team about the demerits — it’s like four in the morning right now — but I intend to do so at some point in the near future. Certainly they have their own side of the story to tell and I’ll relay that information once I have it.

I told you Friday would be fun.

We had a #forgibomb. No explanation needed here. But remember when these campaign videos at least tried to have a message or purpose?

We had Salari-mania with the two-time USC speaker unveiling his website, twitter account, intimidating video and ultimately failed University College hill sign.

We had this light, folksy tune from David Basu Roy which is best listened to while wearing hemp and hackin’ a bit of sack.

It’s not surprising. All three candidates likely targeted this day to do something. It’s the end of the week and just long enough into the campaign period that folks are starting to lose interest, assuming they had any to begin with. It also gives them the weekend to regroup and plan something for next week.

And next week should be a hell of a week. I hear Salari has more than a half dozen videos coming down the pipe. Basu Roy told me yesterday that he was putting the finishing touches on his official campaign video. And Forgione’s camp will surely be active as they have been for the entire campaign period.

I’ll say this — for a race that could have been very dull, we’ve had our fair share of entertainment. Major props go out to all the candidates for keeping things interesting so we at the Gazette can do silly things like this.

Council felt like throwing some meat on the grill on Saturday

As I griped about earlier, heaven forbid we let these candidates actually debate or discuss issues directly with each other. Let’s forget that and ask them hypothetical questions about USC policy for four hours, shall we? Sounds good.

That’s essentially what Saturday morning’s presidential debate at council chambers will be. Gazette managing editor Mike Hayes has been furiously doing research all week, meeting with each current member of the USC board to brainstorm the most challenging, wit-testing queries known to man.

I don’t know why you would ever go to this — it’s at 10:30 a.m. on a Saturday for chrissakes — but for those masochists who do plan on attending, I will warn you that it will be a marathon. Candidates will be grilled on each of the six USC executive portfolios for at least 30-40 minutes apiece. A little quick math and you’re looking at a minimum of three hours. Make sure to bring extra rations and that your loved ones know you are okay.

To be serious for just a fleeting moment here, this grill session is, in my opinion, simply a way for the USC to ensure the potential candidates have done their homework when it comes to Western’s student union. It’s scheduled on a Saturday morning for a reason — you’re not supposed to go. It’s an auditing procedure for the USC who want to make sure there aren’t any Marshall Goldfarbs who can nearly win the election without knowing the first thing about how the USC operates. I don’t disagree with holding the “debate” and I certainly understand the USC’s motivation for creating it this year. I just want to call a spade a spade.