Unity ticket airs campaign on TV

Students watching MTV's "The Real World" tonight will be witnessing a first-time occurrence in IU history. Unity, a party in the upcoming IUSA election March 4 and 5, will be airing commercials promoting their position on campus issues. \n"This is the first time this has been done in the history of IUSA," Unity presidential candidate Aaron Radez said. "There are important issues out there. This will help us to get in touch with the greatest number of people."\nIn the past, with an election code that limits all tickets to a set spending limit, television was considered too expensive a medium for IUSA campaigns to utilize. \nUnity maintains it has stayed within the spending limits for IUSA campaign expenditures, a maximum for $3,170. In producing the ads, they used borrowed equipment, including editing hardware available at the telecommunications lab. \nStill, Unity remains wary of any debate that might arise over their use of television, insisting that they are staying within the constraints of the election code.\n"There is no controversy over Unity's commercials," IUSA election coordinator Leah Silverthorn said. "As long as they don't go over their spending limits and are not breaking any University rules, they are not breaking the code."\nIn national politics, the names Republican and Democrat are as familiar as snow in winter, but imagine national politics if the parties changed each election. Welcome to IUSA, where parties often last only a few semesters, if any at all. Even the current IUSA administration, Kirkwood, will not be running for re-election. \nThis year's tickets, Action, Crimson and Unity, are all new to the IUSA election game. To win, candidates know that no matter how well their platform represents students, perhaps the most important aspect of the election is to get their name out.\nThe advertisements, which will make their premiere tonight between 9:30 and 10 p.m., are tailored for a student audience. Unity produced several commercials ranging from the more serious, highlighting their important platform issues, to spoofs of other popular advertisements, including knock-offs of Mastercard and Gap commercials.\n"They're funny," Radez said. "We sell it fresh, young, upbeat and sexy. That's how we will reach out to our market."\nAccording to Unity chief-of-staff candidate Scott Bird, extensive research was conducted before deciding how to air the advertisements. \n"To reach the MTV generation, you've got to do it on MTV," he said. "We discovered that at any given time, whenever "The Real World" is on TV, at least 10 percent of IU students are watching it."\nIn the past, IUSA candidates have done everything short of producing commercials to spread their name, including handing out flyers, buying ad space in the Indiana Daily Student and hanging banners bearing their monikers throughout campus.\n"Unity is not about maintaining the status quo," Radez said. "We don't just want to hand out flyers. We wanted to take a new approach to reach real students who are about real issues. We borrowed from campaign strategist Ed Rollins, who said, 'If it's not on TV, it barely matters."