Vote Oak Leaf for every seat; we’ll get you a unicorn petting zoo

If you would like a brand new unicorn petting zoo on campus, vote for the Oak Leaf in the upcoming student elections. It will represent you, The Students.

Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission, the case that rendered corporations as people, might not actually affect SRJC student elections, but the Oak Leaf is United 4 Students anyway and will deliver the unicorns.

Our promise is more or less the same promise the other candidates are making.

The problem is not that the issues the candidates bring up are not important—SRJC needs more funding for more sections and the return of the Doyle Scholarship—but the claims they make to fix them are. How will the candidates fix them?

Not one of the candidates has a concrete plan for how he or she will affect change, or what he or she will do in office.

The Associated Students have no clout at the state level or on the Doyle Trustee Board and running for office under this pretense will allow a candidate to do nothing more than have a few words on a college transfer application.

The two big slates (SRJC’s term for a political party), United 4 Students and The Students, don’t add anything to the respective candidates. United 4 Students is united for equity, accountability, sustainability and diversity—broad ideals no one would oppose anyway. The Students’ mission is the definition of student government: involvement and representation.

Students can accomplish a lot, or at least significant headway can be made. Look at the work of Jay Scherf. His article on the Doyle Scholarship ran in the Bohemian and the Oak Leaf and he, with a few other students, wrote an opinion for the Press Democrat. By doing this he garnered attention outside of the SRJC community and later helped set up a meeting between the Doyle Trustees, students and SRJC President Dr. Frank Chong by collecting more than 800 signatures in four days.

Scherf wasn’t even in student government.

Scherf’s tenacious research, organization and involvement with the Doyle Scholarship may have led to the trustees approving its reinstatement, before a federal board cancelled it.

The point is that students can have an impact, by action. That action can come from inside or outside SRJC’s student government; but that word, action, is important.

Not every action has to be as daunting as chasing down Exchange Bank presidents. What about SRJC’s moratorium on dances? One violent incident years ago and SRJC banned all social dances. What about a treasure hunt? What about bring back Day Under the Oaks or something like it.

Community colleges are notoriously apathetic, but there have to be at least 60 of us students who can forgo alcohol for a couple of hours and hang out together. As silly as it sounds to run for a political office planning to make people happy, there is a reason more students watch the Daily Show than C-SPAN. Students like entertainment and trying to shove hard politics down their throats doesn’t make them grow up faster, it alienates them.

Breaking students into politics and responsibilities through entertainment and community could be a great way to fill all the vacant student positions on SRJC’s committees.

But still, vote for the Oak Leaf; we’ll get a unicorn petting zoo on campus.