IUSA: The Party of What?

In case you haven’t heard, there was a presidential election back in November 2008. The major Democratic candidate faced off against the major Republican candidate. Even if you had been living under a rock since the Clinton administration, you could probably have guessed that this would be the case.

Political parties and platforms are the absolute norm in American government. This is not the case, however, within the world of IU politics. Each year, brand new IUSA tickets appear and campaign and preach and stump about topics they claim are the issues important to the IU student body.

This year, the two main tickets for IU Student Association office are iUnity and Kirkwood. iUnity is essentially a continuation of the current B-town administration that was elected last year. Sitting IUSA President Peter SerVaas is even running for administrative vice president. Even with so much overlap, the ticket decided it was necessary to change its name before entering the race.

Kirkwood, the other major ticket, is quite likely the closest thing to a recurring political voice that exists on this campus. A ticket of the same name ran in 2008, and before that in 2005. The current Kirkwood ticket is trying very hard to distance itself from its predecessor, though, due to some election-related violations in the past.

Though the student body at IU changes from year to year, the issues that affect us as students do not change nearly as rapidly. So why should our representatives in IUSA? The push to shed political branding on this campus has become a sad case of the baby being thrown out with the bath water. With each annual election we have to start from square one, which causes us to accomplish less and less. Did the Republican Party dissolve after Nixon? No. They still had goals to accomplish. IUSA does too, and we need leadership that will endure to achieve them.

E-mail: erbcox@indiana.edu