The story so far: On March 31, The Post posted my letter on how I believed that no student should vote in the Student Senate elections for any one of the three “terrible” tickets. This made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Since that letter was posted, I have gone to all the debates, researched as much as I can and have even talked to candidates from One and Restart. I’ve also written columns both on my personal blog and for The New Political. In a sense, I’ve taken this campaign season way too seriously.
And yet, this late in the campaign season, I haven’t made a decision. And that’s OK. With all the knowledge I have about each ticket, I can see why people would vote for them and what can be deal-breaking flaws in the platform.
Action is blessed to have great leaders such as Zainab Kandeh and Rose Troyer, but the ticket brings a somewhat defeatist attitude toward the administration and spends more time being the moderate and less time on combating core student issues.
One is the most structured of the three tickets and has easily attainable goals, but it is also taking monstrous risks with its carryout promise, especially when 75 percent of the ticket is coming from this year’s unaccountable senate.
Restart has great ideas geared toward getting the students involved in decision-making, but it is not grounded in the reality of how to work a student governing body.
My point is this: If you are really dedicated to a ticket this year, you should vote for it. If you did research and know that a ticket is the best, you should vote for it.
However, if you’ve done research and just cannot make a decision by Thursday, that is totally fine, too.
We are lucky this year that we have three tickets that all want to change senate policies instead of keep what we have now. But even with all the pressures from each ticket on how it’s the best for Ohio University, it can be OK to not see the right decision as easily as others can.
Austin Linfante is a freshman studying journalism and a weekly columnist for The New Political.
