Parodic StuCo Campaign Prompts No Write-In Option for Tuesday's Election

Alongside the posters plastered around the campus campaigning the candidates running for the Executive Board of Student Council hangs the mock-campaign, “Sean Taylor for Supreme Leader.” In glowing red posters, upper Sean Taylor wears a costume mocking communist dictatorships and highlights exactly what he knows students wouldn’t want in a leader, all in the name of comic relief.His posters are titled with slogans such as “Yes Sibi,” “Sunday Classes” and  “Less Transparency.” Taylor said that the “absurdist take on the election process” is a satirical campaign that served as comedic relief to the Student Council elections.Taylor continued the joke in a “propaganda” video yielding over 1500 views. He is dressed in the same costume and puts on a Russian accent while he pledges the rules he will instate when he “abolishes” the current student council positions and assumes his position as dictator in the fall. He urged students to write in his name during the elections on Tuesday.Upper Sam Kushell, who was part of Taylor’s team in crafting the parody, said that the primary effort of the joke was to loosen up the mood on campus. Because of the nature of upper spring and the addition of stress that the elections hold on campus, there has been “wide-reaching stress and intensity among the people in [the upper] class,” Kushell said. “We wanted to make [the student body] laugh, so we satirized something that was already going on around campus.”Kushell added that they did not intend to offend anybody with the satire. “We have tried our best to be careful not to offend anybody during the course of the campaign. This was a comedic endeavor, meant merely to parody and satirize, not to be malicious in any way,” Kushell said.Although unexpected, Taylor said that the campaign has received an overwhelmingly positive response. “I've had dozens of people play along with the character when walking around, saluting me,” Taylor said. “I made an appearance this past week in Wetherell during lunch, in character, and was greeted with loud cheers and applause.”Taylor said that he was told by the heads of the Election Committee and the current Student Council President that write-ins would be allowed in the elections and counted as votes. It’s not addressed in the Student Council Constitution and write-ins have been counted in the past. But in a school wide email about this week’s Student Council Elections, it was stated that write-ins would not be counted as votes. Taylor said that although it is primarily a joke, it “serves secondarily as a social experiment...The fact that our satirical campaign gained enough support that the administration had to break down tradition and disallow write-ins means that we succeeded.”Many students were disappointed by the announcement that the write-in votes wouldn’t be counted and saw the policy as the administration taking away their voting rights. There have been several facebook statuses and response emails from students asking for a voice in the write-in.Senior Austin Lowell expressed his disappointment in a Facebook post, telling students to email the current Student Council President and Student Council advisors to change their interpretation of the Student Council Constitution, which they have cited to defend their policy.“The decision to not count write-in votes for the student council elections is a blatant infringement on the voting rights of the students… I urge you to stand up for the right of the student body to elect their own leader,” Lowell said.Upper Pranay Vemulamada said that although Taylor’s “campaign” was funny at first, he believes it has gone too far. He said the positive reaction to the joke shows the disrespectful attitude of the student body toward Student Council elections. Before Taylor’s campaign, Vemulamada said that he saw the attitude towards the elections as serious.“I talked to many people about it, and they seemed to support either candidate based on their posters or the points they made during assembly,” Vemulamada said.But as student’s began to react to Taylor’s campaign, his understanding of the student body’s perception of student council changed.“Sean’s joke has made it apparent that a lot of student’s don’t take [Student Council elections] as seriously as I thought they did,” Vemulamada said.Student Council President candidate and upper Rebecca Ju also said that she is concerned that people “don’t entirely respect or see student council as seriously” as she’d like. But she understands why the campaign has been so popular. “People at Exeter like the relief from the daily stress, and good comedy is great for that,” she said. “I’m all for comedic relief, and Sean’s campaign has been really funny.”​