Election manifestos

Red Alert

At around 6pm I came down the stairs from the lab. The eng building was left in a complete state as you can see in the attached picture.

Do the candidates or their canvassers care about the extra burden of work they are putting on the cleaners who are paid in general the minimum wage?

Do they care about the state of buildings such as Engineering that they leave behind?

Is it time we re-thought our reliance on election materials? I think it's high-time that someone took the high moral ground environmentally on the insane number of manifestos and leaflets that the candidates hand out or throw around. Each manifesto is printed on non-recycled paper, this is coloured using harmful chemicals and is generally printed on one of the high-energy-consuming laser printers in the campus.

Someone either in the SU or the college administration, but preferably the candidates by agreement next year need to just consign handheld manifestos to the dustbin of history. Keep the posters by all means, but seen as the majority of people use sites like Bebo and Facebook, it might be a lot better to network that way. Finally, maybe if the candidates themselves made themselves available in buildings such as Engineering where they aren't amongst their own little circle of arts hacks then people might actually vote for them having seen the real thing.

In short, please don't leave your crap in the buildings for people less fortunate in life to have to clean up.

ant043

must say i definitely agree with this. some of the lecture rooms in health sciences were in a terrible state.

stereoroid

Another case of "ah, it's not just me, then". Is it over yet?

Some of the candidates were in the Science Hub today - but there was one candidate going around the rest of the building, pestering people who were trying to work or relax. He didn't quite get to me - and a good thing too, for him, :mad:

redcar

Nothing more fun than sitting down to a desk and only being able to see 100's of the same faces looking at you. Seriously they have too many of them.

bryanw

The candidates were banned from putting the manifestos in lecture theatres in the Science building. They still did it though... the lecture theatres were buried under them for the past week or 2.

And of course so many of the candidates made an issue of being green and recycling/the environment. Hypocrites.

One of my lectures on Monday was delayed for 10 minutes because SIX!!! of the candidates came in to give speeches jumping on desks and everything.

The_Minister

Tbh, that generally just happens because the people canvassing are rushing from faculty to faculty.
It was mentioned to me while in Ag, and I picked up all of Paul's ones, and I know that Isobelle got all of hers at the same time (this was yesterday).
If you had mentioned it to the candidates, they would have sent people over to pick them up - nothing looks worse than a pile of rubbish with your name on it.


However, if you read the manifesto of one of the candidates, they claimed that their manifesto was printed on recycled paper, when it was not and could not be.

Stepherunie

Well in fairness everything was cleaned out of Arts today - we all cleaned up after the call for the end of the election.

Interesting to see what candidates did leave a mess though. I know I cleaned up health sci after me today.

fatal

definitley agree.I wonder what the candidated have to say about that:rolleyes:
O and any candidate who had people running around the ground floor of buildings and was shouting in my face that I should vote for X did not get my vote

PennyLane

I can just hear the trees crying.... And why is it necessary to have an entire block of identical posters on one notice board? I get it: you have a face. Message delivered. Now go plant a forest in penance.

stolenwine

They have no real power anyway, it's like putting a group of drunk babies in charge.

disclaimer:I'm not suggesting we give alcohol to small children.

Riamfada

I dont agree with the drunken babies. I think the Union do great work because I see it. But I just wanted to state that I agree with the above poster regarding the repitition of the same poster over and over and over .... ect

UCD students have to realise that having 50 posters in one spot dosnt increase awareness of an event or a candidate. It just pisses people off having to look at the same face. Once the message gets across is what I would have assumed the point of a poster is. I think that people believe that the ammount of votes they get directly relates to their coverage on the billboards. I mean EXTRA postering space was created for candidtates this year yet they still felt the need to blanket everything that stickytape will stick to and tore down anything that encroached on even one of their many posters.

And I would go blaming the Union of that though.

Its simply the lack if imagination and fear that someone else might be able to advertise an event. Its built into the UCD psyche by now and will never change. UCD will continue to piss away up to 3k a week on posters until admin or the societies office do something about enabling people to campaign:rolleyes:

Honestly. One email with each manifesto on it and a nice picture sent out to all members of the Union v. a rat race of over enthusiastic campaign managers and under enthusiastic candidtates.

Roll on 2009 !

Breezer

I agree, the amount of manifestos littering the Science building yesterday was insane. Red Alert, if you think that photo's bad, you have no idea! Having said that, Health Science was a lot better. Still though, I think it's unnecessary.

I very rarely saw people actually reading the manifestos. I normally take an interest in politics of any description and even I didn't get around to reading them until shortly before I voted. They seem like an ineffective waste of resources of all description.

+1 to Grimes' idea of emailing all union members with the manifestos. Sure, less people might inadvertently read them, but those that actually care about the election will make an effort to read them. Those that don't, from what I can see, aren't likely to vote based on the manifestos anyway. It comes down to who they know that knows such and such, voting for whoever they think is hotter, ticking random boxes, etc.

I also think a limited number of posters are effective in letting people know who the candidates are. These should prominently display links to their campaign pages where they can elaborate on their promises.

This won't happen unless it's regulated by the Union or college authorities, and/or agreed by all candidates though. I wouldn't expect one candidate to take the moral high ground and hand a perceived advantage to someone else. Hopefully the elected officers will take note of this and put a scheme in place for next year.

seraphimvc

yes,extremely irresponsible:(

and i am sure when the time you get the vote papers ,you will confused on those names.as a normal student myself ,i can only remember one or two names.why?cause' we never really care about those manifestos all around the lectures hall.proved to be wasted .think of the money and resourses they pay on that.

Ah well,if this is some sort of big annual extravaganza for some people who enjoy it,then let it be:D just ,remember to clean up your sh!te after...

remus808

Yeah I have to agree, as a member of a campaign team, that I was sickened to see the huge volume of manifestos and flyers candidates are provided with. It's something that bothered me the whole way through, it really is utterly ridiculous. They should reduce the number manyfold, after all, as long as everyone gets the same amount there's no disadvantage to anyone.

Red Alert

It's time for an outright ban on free-floating manifestos, full stop.

Stepherunie

The day for just flyers and electronic manifestos shouel be here, however the guidelines we follow are old thus the procedures we use are slightly outdated.

However we do have ballot boxed that comply with UK electoral guidelines (what I learned yesterday)

MarkOShea

It's a shocking waste alright. Maybe the current "look at me" general election styled posters should be done away with, and candidates could plaster their manifesto all over the campus instead of their faces. Lesser of 2 evils!

Het-Field

I think the worst thing about any sabbatical election is the talk after the event. It often doesnt focus around the campaign gone by, the winners, the losers, the RONS and the count. It has a focus on, who will be next ? Its a disgrace to start thinking of the next person in line for the office. The names of overzealous first years, and ambitious hacks are tossed around willingly as the simpleminded, mercenary discussion of the most exciting union event takes a hold.

At least with the Executive elections there is little or no discussion about the next year. We simply have to wait and see which first year careerist takes a shine to elections during the sabbats and decide to hold their own. That of course is no slur on the people who want to do the job, and have been committed to the union and the unions work for many years

Riamfada

That Paddy Caroll sounds like hes going to run again

panda100

Stepherunie wrote: »

The day for just flyers and electronic manifestos shouel be here, however the guidelines we follow are old thus the procedures we use are slightly outdated.

Is it up to Morgan Shelly to alter the guidelines or would we have to hold a referendum in order to change the guidelines in the consitution?

Stepherunie

Morgan can allow what he likes, he jsut chooses to allow posters, flyers and manifestos.