As the dust settles on this year's ASUA elections, one thing is certain: They were interesting. It was a very competitive presidential race and one of the most competitive senate elections in recent memory - it was one for the books. Unfortunately, 10 years from now, all people will remember from these elections is the controversy that arose after it.
I am of course talking about the 11th-hour deal Josh Shapiro made with the graduate students and all the appeals that have been filed and counterfiled against both presidential candidates. Things got so hectic that the Associated Students of the University of Arizona Supreme Court Justice Erin Borg gave each candidate a 24-hour window to file complaints directly to her so all the confusion could be sorted out. From the first night of the general election to the announcement of the results, you might have thought it was Bush v. Gore instead of Chapman v. Shapiro.
In the end, smoke filled the room and people scrambled around to find the fires; but in reality, there turned out to be nothing at all except a smoke machine.
The deal Shapiro made was not wrong. He was just trying to win and can't be faulted for that. Nobody should look ill at creative political strategies. The real underlying issue was not whether he could have lived up to his end of the bargain, what the deal was or what it promised, but rather with whom he made it: a former Graduate and Professional Student Council president who is now a UA employee.
The key words there are "former" and "employee."
There is nothing wrong with being enthusiastic about a group that you lead for a time and giving advice to those following what you started. There is something very valuable to be gained from all these people with the word "former" in their titles. It's when these same people start influencing the current election that a line is crossed and it becomes inappropriate, especially if they now work for the UA in another capacity.
If we don't draw the line there, the question becomes where we should draw it so that we don't have a lot of gray area that people like to flirt with to cause trouble. Should a faculty member be allowed to run student campaigns? Should UA staff be allowed to help candidates with tactics and deals to help them win?
God help this campus if ASUA candidates have to start lobbying the nice ladies at the Cactus Grill so they will wear T-shirts and buttons endorsing one candidate over another. If we don't address this issue now, that's exactly where we could head.
The deal touched on an issue that has been around for years, but never has there been a clearer example of why it is wrong. Students should be allowed to democratically elect their own leaders, for better or worse, without the influence of outsiders.
The other issue still being smoothed out is that of candidates bringing frivolous complaints that do little to perpetuate the democratic process that should be protected from outside influences. Complaints about candidates after the election is over and grievances such as these are not the answer to restoring credibility to a system everyone says they want to improve. These complaints won't have the effect people are looking for 98 percent of the time anyway, and most of them are only filed after the urging of several other people - mostly those "former" people.
These are issues that we have to start thinking about now in order to make sure the elections run more smoothly in the future and that we aren't bogged down by complaints after each election because emotions were high at the time. We have to make sure that people know these elections are the students' elections and should consist of students lobbying other students.
Jason Poreda is a political science and communication senior and is a former ASUA senator. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.