DC Election or Popularity Contest?

Why do you want to be elected for Discipline Committee? “I want to become more involved at school. I want to have a say in what is right. I want to put it on my college applications.” These are some responses that are most common when the time comes to elect new members for the Discipline Committee (DC). Leading up to the week of Feb. 7, students signed multiple candidates’ petitions until they didn’t recognize their own signatures, and the signatures became irrelevant to the vote. Each candidate convinced his or her entire dorm, sports team or club to vote for them, which made the voting process biased toward popularity and involvement.In order to be considered for DC elections, candidates had to gather 350 signatures. This means that at every meal, students passed around petitions to every table, and candidates very rarely had to state why they were even running.In extracurricular activities and dorms, candidates gathered mass signatures, as it was almost a guarantee that the whole group would be supportive. In this way, it is impossible that the elections were based off of the reasoning and hard work of the candidates, even though many candidates went out of their way to make videos and posters explaining why they should be elected.Voting polls were open on Monday, Feb. 8. Students voted for eight candidates out of the 28 who were running. In return, they received candy. Many people said afterwards that they only voted to get the candy. There was also a lot of buzz around school that day, as students convinced one another to vote for specific candidates. Certain names were repeated much more than others. Those candidates are the ones who made funny videos, are on popular sports teams or are in the biggest dorms on campus.Popularity and involvement on campus played a huge part in the elections. Students would not vote for a candidate whom they did not know or connect with at all. This means that being in clubs raised the chances of being elected for DC by a lot. People tended to vote pretty quickly because they checked off all the names that they recognized. After all, there is no point in voting for someone unfamiliar.Dorm size also affected the outcome of the election. Many students voted for all the candidates who were in their dorm. With this guarantee, candidates in bigger dorms such as Dunbar or Wheelwright Hall most likely got more votes from the 60-plus students in their dorm.The election was not entirely left up to the students; teachers also had a say in who was elected for DC. Out of the eight candidates who were elected by students, four of them were chosen to actually be on the committee. The teachers might have eliminated some of the bias of the students’ votes, but there was not enough leeway when only eight of the original 28 made it through to the teachers’ votes.Although the administration at the academy tried their best to elect candidates for DC who would bring honest judgement and good purpose to disciplinary actions at school, the student-run elections allowed for too many other factors, such as involvement and dorm size, to affect the results of the voting process. The voting was not based on a candidate’s desire to help make the right decision in discipline cases, as it probably should have been, but rather the connections that voters had with the candidates.