Duke Student Government elections are coming up Thursday. But does anyone other than the candidates really give a shit?
I sure don't, and I hope you don't either. Because, after all, DSG just doesn't matter for the average Duke student. Despite the accolades, the fancy rhetoric and the incessant Chronicle coverage, it all boils down to a bunch of nerdy kids who like hearing themselves speak and love fantasizing about their non-existent self-importance.
As I've written before, DSG doesn't matter because it never really does anything for the student body. Since I've been at Duke, there haven't been any tangible landmark changes that have radically enhanced student life or galvanized the student body to agitate for change. There hasn't even been anything that I've thought of as "really cool" or "a really good idea."
And the sad thing is that there probably won't be any such changes in the future, either, if the current DSG model remains in place. It just doesn't work-as an advocacy organization or a bumbling bureaucracy. Period.
Sure, here and there, DSG does a couple of little things that might slightly reduce the level of incompetence that surrounds the Duke experience for a few lucky students. Event registration, Flunches and online party monitoring are some such examples, but they're about as marginal as achievements get.
These are minor improvements that should have been done a long time ago-or done right the first time-and fall far short of something I'd be proud to write home about. But you'll never hear that from anyone running for DSG. Candidates will claim credit for just about anything under the sun.
Why, for example, does everyone running for president insist that he or she personally saved Tailgate? I speak from the experience of meeting with Larry Moneta, Kemel Dawkins and Aaron Graves, among other administrators, about reforming Tailgate when I say that no one student has ever "saved" it. Simply put, administrators have allowed it to continue in various forms and no student input has ever been decisive.
Candidate platforms are quite another joke entirely. Everyone says the same things in essentially the same words, and they are all just rehashing ideas that have been bandied around for the past few years but that are never put into place. Worse, presidential hopefuls promise 100 different changes that couldn't be enacted in a century of DSG sessions, preventing them from concentrating on issues that really matter.
Bottom line: DSG is like when you see a former hook-up on the quad, and you just know the next few moments of your life are going to be unbearably awkward because neither you nor that notch on your bedpost knows how to react.
Do you simply nod, wave and keep on walking, or do you try to initiate conversation, and if so, how much is too much? Or do you pretend to be on the phone and walk by in ignorant bliss, praying to almighty Jesus that you escape undetected?
DSG presents the same conundrum. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether you should try to care about its feelings or be that buckethead that leaves before it wakes up. Either way, you know you'll be left with a bad taste in your mouth and a massive side order of guilt.
Except with DSG, you can abstain and no one gets hurt. In fact, that's exactly what you should do-refuse to vote. After all, your vote is meaningless any way you look at it: If you vote for the loser, your vote truly goes uncounted; and if you vote for the winner, it's unlikely that you cast the deciding vote out of all the others if the margin was greater than one. Even if, by some miracle, your vote put the contest over the edge, you could have just as easily not voted and still seen your desired candidate succeed.
Plus, there's that whole business that DSG doesn't really do anything for you anyway. Add it all up and there are a bunch of good reasons not to vote and no really good reasons to do so.
But if you just have to vote, here's what I'd do. Either vote for Lawrence Chen-because he's completely untainted by DSG's blundering ways-or organize a write-in candidate that hails from the Pirate Party. I know I'd much rather have a scurvy pirate cap'n steering the ship than another do-nothing disciple of www.elliott.dorm.duke.edu.
Jon Detzel is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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