Dear editors of the Peak,
Re: SFSS Candidate Endorsements
You recently published an article endorsing certain candidates to the SFSS Board of Directors. While I agree that you should be able to endorse candidates simply on the basis of free speech, I believe that given the source of your funding and the lack of competition on campus, you have a responsibility to produce objective and informative endorsements – or don’t endorse anyone at all. Getting together in a room and taking a straw poll of your editorial board is nowhere near the standard students deserve.
I don’t doubt that you have a greater understanding of the Board’s inner workings than the average busy student – it’s not as if that takes very much – but you still have a responsibility to represent the views of students over your personal opinions on an issue as large as this one. Your lack of awareness for this responsibility is clearly evident in your discussion of which VP Finance candidate to endorse, where you claim that “large structural changes” are necessary, without explaining what that means, before sweeping check requisitions and student outreach – a major issue for DSU and Club Executives – under the rug.
On the topic of student outreach, you encouraged students to entirely disenfranchise themselves by telling them to not vote for a president, and in an election where gender played a prominent role, you chose to belittle a female candidate because she “came off as … nervous” and a male candidate was “able often able to speak over her and dominate the conversation.”
Although I could go on, my hope is that next year you will continue to endorse candidates. However, I hope you will do your due diligence, find out what students want and need, and then investigate which candidate would address those issues best. Anything less would be an abuse of the privileged position you are fortunate enough to find yourselves in.
Sincerely,
Tomas Rapaport
Disclaimer: Tomas Rapaport ran for Science Representative in the aforementioned SFSS election.
