The past week or so at AU has been a week filled with the spirited discussion over the spring Student Government elections. And by “spirited discussion” I mean “wicked crap-fest.”

Seriously, I miss last September’s impeachment hearings.

Four very strong candidates threw themselves into the running for Student Government President: Nate Bronstein, Anthony Dunham, Nirvana Habash, and Seth Rosenstein. Through my past six months as Student Government Parliamentarian, I have gotten to know each of them very well and have worked closely with most of them. Nate Bronstein was an enthusiastic Senator when I joined last September, and is now the Director of Outreach for the SG. He’s the one who put on a Winter Semi-Formal before finals last semester (actually the biggest SG event that actually happened so far this year), and got everyone excited about it by having a sense of humor about it–such as naming sponsorship levels for the event “Bronstein” and “Fiery Passion.” I didn’t have an opportunity to get to know Nirvana very well as she was abroad during first semester and only rejoined the Senate after the Snowpocalypse, but she has definitely shown herself to be an active member of SG. Seth Rosenstein was first sworn in as Senator on the day that I was sworn in, and I’ve seen him take a very active role as an advocate for key campus life issues in the Senate, particularly stepping up after AU’s housing policies flip-flopped last January. And Anthony Dunham was instrumental in helping me get acquainted with the Student Government; he was the Speaker of the Senate when I first became Parliamentarian (making him the person I worked closest with during my first month or so transitioning into my role), not to mention he was my predecessor as Parliamentarian in 2008-09.

See what I did there? I just said something positive and complementary about all four candidates and my experiences with them, without pointing fingers, criticizing their thoughts about running, or saying anything about the state of AU’s Student Government. Nor did I endorse any of them. I know who I’m going to vote for tomorrow–it wasn’t easy for me to decide–but I’m not going to spew out a meaningless endorsement as though one of them is immensely superior to the other three.

And that’s because I don’t expect any kind of huge partisan politics to arise out of a presidential campaign for Student Government. We’re not here to fight over foreign policy or health care positions; we’re all here to advocate and do what’s best for the students of American University.

Last Thursday I produced the televised SG Presidential Debate co-sponsored by ATV and The Eagle. It took a lot of work over many weeks to put together, and a number of communication issues caused me a lot of undue stress in preparing the live production. But in the end, as far as the production was concerned (which was the primary area of my concern), the debate went very well. Feel free to watch it here.

If you do watch it, you’ll probably notice that a) it’s kind of boring, and b) the candidates seem to agree with each other a lot. Knowing all four of these candidates well (as I’ve already mentioned), I wasn’t at all surprised that they would agree a lot with each other. Yet for some reason all of the viewers, campus media commentators, and the other crew members that were working with me on this debate seemed surprised that there wasn’t more drama. For some reason some short-sighted commentators seemed to miss the obvious fact that we at ATV were not responsible for what the candidates actually said. In my view, the debate exemplified exactly what the Student Government and the candidates should stand for.

And outside of last Thursday’s debate, what we’ve been getting out of this week-and-a-half campaign season has been anything but civil, yet the stupid part has been that the primary group responsible for making these elections such a firestorm is the board within SG responsible for overseeing the elections themselves.

You see, AUSG has a whopping seven pages of election regulations that place all kinds of restrictions on campaigns, and it’s up to the Board of Elections to enforce them. Of course it doesn’t help that the Board of Elections chair resigned just a week or two before the elections started getting underway, so the newly-installed chairwoman of the Judicial Board (which oversees the BOE) decided to also take on the role of Acting Chair for the BOE. Hopefully there wouldn’t arise any possibility of a conflict of interest.

Except that a conflict did arise when a staff member on Nirvana Habash’s campaign sent a campaign e-mail through an academic mailing list without permission from the BOE, a clear infraction of the election regulations. The BOE responded by suspending her campaign and removing her from the ballot. (Huh, just for sending an e-mail? But wait, it gets better.) She appealed the decision to the Judicial Board, which of course had the same chair (though the chair claims that she did not speak or vote in the J-Board hearing and deliberations), and they found that the BOE had failed to provide her with the necessary 12 hours to “rectify” the violation. (Though I’m still baffled as to how one “rectifies” the sending of an e-mail to a mailing list.) Of course this caused plenty of controversy, and after a retrial, or whatever it was, the decision was reached that Habash could continue to campaign but would have to run as a write-in candidate.

Okay, that kind of stinks, but the debate was that night and everything was hunky-dory. After the debate, the current SG president endorsed Nate Bronstein in a song, and then Friday came. And then all hell broke loose.

• Friday 3/19, 2:46 PM: Habash calls for student misconduct charges for the acting BOE chair
• 5:48 PM: The Judicial Board chair sends out a Judicial Order in which she steps down as acting BOE chair and announces a replacement
• ~6:30 PM: Some idiot sends a fake e-mail to numerous list-servs, reaching over 1000 AU students, claiming to be an endorsement for Nate Bronstein.
• 8:43 PM: The Eagle posts an editorial arguing that all the presidential candidates ought to just run as write-ins to make the election “fair” again

Oh, and yet another e-mail violation happened the next day.

Now to keep this blog post from getting extremely long, I won’t go into just how crazy all of this was for the candidates, the Board of Elections members, and everyone else in the SG. Let’s just say that it feels like whatever shred of legitimacy the SG may have had simply vanished during this campaign. The idea of having all candidates run as write-ins never happened because apparently–according to the other candidates–Seth Rosenstein refused to do so. Fortunately the fake Bronstein e-mail did not cost him anything (since it was so obviously fake), though paradoxically the next e-mail supporting him that was sent out the next day by an actual member of his staff didn’t cost him anything, despite being similar to the one that hurt Habash. So now there’s all kinds of allegations about every such thing flying around in terms of who did or didn’t violate some rule or act unethically, and there’s no shortage of Senators who claim that they’re going to vote invalidate the election results (I wish them luck, because for some strange reason, our bylaws necessitates a 3/4 vote for that to happen). I’m sorry, I thought we were supposed to be focusing on which candidate would make the best next Student Government President?

Even though I strongly disagree with his unfounded comments towards last week’s SG Debate and his “the world revolves around me” attitude when it comes to AUSG, I would have to agree with him on these comments. But then one scrolls down and reads the mudslinging between the candidates over their different interpretations of what the future of SG should look like–there’s just no need for it. (I guess I should applaud Nate Bronstein for not getting involved when the comments turned into a virtual food fight between the other three candidates.)

As I said, I’ve decided whom I’m going to vote for. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t vote for any of the other three candidates. All of them are active, passionate members of SG and have a wealth of good ideas that they will bring to the office which they seek. None of them deserve to have less-than-an-equal shot at the office because of some insignificant, harmless “violation.” Ultimately though, one thing that this campaign is showing clearly is the attitudes of each of these candidates, and that’s going to be the key to selecting the cream of the crop for this office. The American University Student Government is so dysfunctional right now that–while it may not be anywhere near as bad as the actual government just a few blocks away from us–it is going to take a leader that can reach out to all sides, build bridges, establish good relationships, and especially be able to exude a sense of humor when it’s fitting to do so to help bring the AUSG closer to where it should be–an organization that represents, serves, and advocates for students. And most of all it’s going to take more than just the newly-elected President; everyone in SG and everyone at American University are going to have to stop lighting fires and start building bridges if AUSG is ever going to change direction.

I hope that despite all of the new fires that this election has fueled, we will walk away from this election having selected a leader that will help turn the sprinklers on so that we can all cool down and move forward.