'Vote Hard' misses point

The executive branch of the IU Student Association is well on its way to becoming professional politicians. After deciding to bribe student votes with a sweepstakes for a $60,000 Corvette, they have decided to throw in an extra $5,000 a piece for two "scholarships" for the second- and third-place contestants in its "Vote Hard" campaign. "Scholarships" is in quotation marks because it's really just another form of voter bribery masked as a positive initiative. IUSA is making its U.S. Congressperson proud with the spin they are putting on this.\nIUSA just didn't seem to get it when the IDS Editorial Board published "Corvette or conscience: IUSA wrong to purchase car," Sept. 6. The Corvette not only excludes international students; it's just simply a waste of money. These "scholarships" are no different. The "Vote Hard" initiative is just a raffle. \nThe scholarship idea is a good one, but not in this way. If IUSA were to take the $70,000 they are throwing away on this campaign and created true scholarships with an application process producing a well-deserved winner, the cause would be much nobler.\nIt is a very real possibility that the winner of these scholarships could be a student whose dad is a lottery winner and mom is a plastic surgeon, while hundreds or thousands of students are stuck with loans that won't disappear until their children enter college. The best way to go about this is to create scholarships for students in need so IUSA can get back to what they were originally intending to do: serve students.\nIf getting votes is what IUSA is truly concerned about then put some of this money into a marketing campaign for the Student Association, such as the one that was mentioned briefly in the Sept. 6 editorial. The biggest complaint that has been echoed time and time again about IUSA is that no one knows what it does. It was only recently that IUSA decided to put "student government" under its logo. Now that the student body knows what IUSA is, let them know what you do. There is a nice business school on 10th Street that might know a thing or two about marketing where $70,000 can buy a lot of advice. \nIUSA needs to take a few steps back from this "Vote Hard" campaign and decide how they can best benefit a majority of the student body rather than a selected few, because right now, IUSA just isn't getting it.\n