$82,600 - That’s IUSA’s budget for 2007-2008. If it’s true that “you get what you pay for,” IU students are getting shortchanged.\nAfter it was over, those of us who had been following the election sat incredulous and wondered how it happened: How did the ticket involved in an e-mail scandal and whose perpetrator had already admitted guilt win the election? Let alone the fact that Kirkwood was seen by many of us on the opinion staff as the weakest of the three tickets running. The entire ordeal is a sad commentary on the IU Student Association’s present state, and it bodes even worse for student interest. The time to ignore IUSA’s inner workings is over.\nThis is serious, and something needs to be done.\nPerhaps the worst part is that despite the scandal, which broke in plenty of time for voters to react, Kirkwood won the popular vote. The night that the results were declared, IUSA held a judicial hearing on the Kirkwood issue. Although Adam Pozza – the man who confessed to stealing the opposition’s campaign emails – was kicked off the ticket and Kirkwood was fined 20 percent of its campaign expenditures, both Big Red and INdiana filed complaints afterward asserting that justice had not been done.\nThe judicial hearing left much to be desired. Kirkwood’s then-presidential candidate Joe Weis had called election committee chair Sarah McDonough earlier in the day to ask if his ticket’s presence was mandatory, only to find it was just “strongly encouraged.” That night, none of Kirkwood’s executive candidates showed up to the hearing. Weis points out that the election did not end until two hours after the start of the hearing, and that they wanted to continue campaigning until the end. But in the face of such serious allegations, we can’t help but wonder why the ticket didn’t see fit to send some representation. Two of the four election committee members who were present were part of Weis’s fraternity. It’s impossible to know whether their presence affected the committee’s decision, but it’s equally difficult not to question the group’s objectivity.\nThe committee said its purpose was to judge facts rather than find them, and it could only rule on what it had been presented. Weis claims that no one on the Kirkwood ticket was aware of Pozza’s actions until Fields filed the complaint. But Big Red can’t help but wonder – and we think justifiably so – whether Pozza was truly acting alone. As of March 31, Big Red presidential candidate Luke Fields had requested that UITS conduct a further inquiry to see if the e-mails had been forwarded to anyone else, and requested in his petition that the committee wait until it had further information to cast a final judgement. At the time of publication, the results of the UITS investigation were still pending.\nThat Kirkwood managed to win the popular vote despite a noticeably lackluster campaign and then a flurry of controversy speaks volumes about the IUSA election process. There are three possible reasons for the outcome. The first is that students voted for Kirkwood despite the scandal and the appearance that the ticket was not as competitive as the other two as a sort of conscious endorsement of the underdog. The second is that no news reached the majority of voters, which is unlikely, considering that people knew enough to vote. The third is that the low overall voter turnout couldn’t do much to counter support from well-connected persons and the greek community, and this distorted election results. If voters chose Kirkwood despite its obvious problems, it speaks to the stake they had in Kirkwood’s success, implying that collective interest trumped public good.\nConsidering that much of the participation in IUSA has always come from the greek community, and that Kirkwood was commonly known as “the greek ticket,” we’re left to wonder if this is the reason. Some have been quick to defend Kirkwood, citing how “down to earth” its platform was. This is the same ticket that simultaneously recommended a 24-hour bus service and a campus green initiative, that promised “free football tickets” and couldn’t seem to think of ways to spend our money fast enough. At the IUSA debates, the Kirkwood candidates were uniformly unimpressive, their answers to every question a stacatto of declarative sentences solely in politico-speak. But the bigger questions at hand are whether Kirkwood should stay, whether IUSA has any legitimacy left and what it can do to fix itself.\nIt was commonly said during the election that getting students to participate in IUSA was a major concern for all parties. Voter turnout has historically been low, and during this election, only 8,000 of IU’s nearly 40,000 students cast votes. That isn’t a promising statistic, especially considering that for an entire day, a system error made it so that graduate students couldn’t use the online voting system, and only had the option of casting provisional ballots. INdiana’s presidential candidate David White is a graduate student and was counting on higher involvement from his peers.\nWith all of this in mind, you can’t blame voters for not caring anymore. IUSA has done nothing to prove its value to students. Even when one asks IUSA members what progress they’ve made recently, their responses center more on excuses than accomplishments. The Supreme Court hasn’t posted a ruling online since 2005, and the Congress is largely made up of students who frequently don’t show up in sufficient number to meet quorum, and therefore can’t decide on any legislation.\nIf IUSA can’t represent us, and if it can’t install a ticket with integrity, it doesn’t deserve legitimacy. Playing a meaningless game is one thing, but doing so under the pretense of popular support and the benefit of student funds is quite another. Since the election, all three tickets have filed complaints to the elections committee, further damaging the organization’s reputation. If IUSA doesn’t fix this – and fast – students will give up on it for good. Then the only thing left to do will be for the administration to dismantle it, and that would be a shame. If done right, student government has the potential to improve student life. Hopefully, this debacle will inspire IUSA to get its house in order and galvanize worthy, committed students into joining its ranks. But until that time, IUSA has to manage what it has, starting by ensuring that its elections process is just.
Editors’ note: IDS opinion columnist Indira Dammu is an associate justice and chair of the internal affairs committee in the IUSA Supreme Court, and did not contribute to this editorial.
