"Visibility and transparency are top priorities for SG.”
So said Student Government’s director of external affairs in a letter to the editor that ran in these pages last week.
While we want to believe his statement, conditions on the ground make it seem like a hollow PR gambit.
Swamp Party declined invitations to debates organized by two prominent student organizations and have agreed only to participate in the one sponsored by SG.
The first, sponsored by Pride Student Union and Women’s Student Association, was supposed to happen today. The groups invited members of both Access Party and Swamp Party to the event. Swamp dropped out of this debate because the candidates for president and vice president have exam conflicts. That’s perfectly understandable. Heavy involvement may sometimes mask it, but we’re all here for school. We get that.
Whatever — it’s one debate, right?
Except, Swamp declined to participate in another one as well, which was sponsored by Asian American Student Union and planned for Thursday.
In the email to AASU President Stephanie Wong in which he declined the event on Swamp Party’s behalf, President and spokesman Ricky Salabarria originally said there were time conflicts again.
But then he touted the move as a gesture of fairness. In order “to not have to choose” which student organization-sponsored debates the party participates in, its candidates will only appear at one: the SG-sponsored debate through the Freshman Leadership Council.
To be fair, Hans Rojas, SG Supervisor of Elections, has recommended that parties only participate in the SG-sponsored debate. He said this as the leader of an impartial government body, but in an email to the Alligator he specified that “it is up to the full discretion of the political parties themselves to engage in any debates that they see fit.”
Is Swamp just falling in line with SG’s example of not playing favorites? Does it only want to participate in a debate run by an SG it effectively controls? Is this retaliation for Wong’s vocal disapproval of last week’s nomination of a former Swamp majority leader as a replacement election commissioner?
Whatever the motive, these decisions are not just shady — they’re a slap in the face to the very groups Swamp claims it strives to represent.
Less than a week ago, we quoted a student who chose to slate with Swamp because she felt the party would represent her queer and Asian-American identities. Swamp and its predecessors have long histories of co-opting student organizations for minorities to secure votes and Senate seats, then cutting them loose when they’ve served their purposes.
We can imagine the students on Swamp’s executive ticket have intensely packed schedules — yet we’d also imagine student-sponsored debates are exactly the kind of events they’d be striving to participate in.
