The Board of Election's (BoE) severe restrictions on negative campaigning are inherently undemocratic. While BoE regulations prohibiting slander are appropriate and protect candidates from unfair personal attacks from their opponents, the BoE's accompanying discouragement of any form of negative campaigning disables a basic function of democracy: the voters' ability to learn about the pros and cons of each contestant.
Without the ability to engage in even the most reasonable and rational debate, candidates can only give hollow promises of "more events" and "better fundraising." Under the current system, ineffective student leaders are able to stay in power simply because nobody can point out their laziness and incompetence. In the end, these conditions degrade students' already flagging respect for StuCo by reinforcing StuCo's impotence.
Hopkins students are disillusioned with the election process. With one BoE fiasco after another, it's little wonder that Hopkins undergrads are apathetic about their student officials. The only way to restore students' trust in the organization that runs our elections is to make the election system more democratic.
According to the BoE's campaign regulations, which are on its Web site, "Negative campaigning is prohibited. You may not misrepresent your opponent to the public or to the BoE by making false accusations or fabricating violations against them, directly or indirectly."
Slander -- false speech injurious to another candidate's reputation -- obviously shouldn't be allowed. Factual criticism, however, is a totally different form of speech and should not be discouraged by the BoE. Suppose an incumbent candidate had been upholding the bare minimum of his or her responsibilities during his term. Does the BoE really mean to say that the incumbent's opponents can't point this out?
Perplexed, I called BoE chair Matt Bouloubasis and asked him to clarify the rule. He told me, "We like to see the candidates maintain a positive tone throughout their campaign. The idea is to stay positive and keep the spirit positive." That's all well and dandy, but we aren't in elementary school anymore. When one of our publicly elected student officials deserves to be criticized, the voters need to hear it. Besides, Eddie's Market sells Kleenex, and it's only a block away.
If students who run for positions in student government know that they will be subject to scrutiny for their actions, these candidates will take their roles more seriously during the year.
I know the BoE is trying to prevent another Eric Wolkoff debacle, in which Wolkoff was demonized and forced to withdraw from the race. The personal attacks from which Wolkoff suffered were undeserved and should not be inflicted on any candidate. However, stringent rules against negative campaigning were already in place before the Wolkoff incident. The charge against him was led by a group of Daily Jolt posters, not his political opponents. Wolkoff was not the target of negative campaigning; he was the unfortunate victim of a completely different phenomenon: an online "flame war" against his candidacy. Less stringent rules about negative campaigning would not make a similar "flaming" incident any more likely.
Before we got off the phone, Bouloubasis said one more thing: "This is a school election, not national politics." The problem with this "it doesn't really matter" attitude is it gets translated from the student government to the students. Overwhelmingly, Hopkins undergraduates feel that StuCo doesn't do much for the student body. Once the BoE starts taking its role in our small-scale democratic system seriously, students will follow suit and start caring about the Homewood political process.
The more the BoE restricts the freedom of candidates to point out each other's flaws, the less democratic the election process becomes. The less democratic the election process and the fewer voters know about the relative qualities of the candidates, the lower the quality of our elected officials. The lower the quality of our elected officials, the less our student government is able to competently do its job. The BoE must not discourage critical dialogues between candidates during StuCo and class elections.
Joshua Robinson's column resumes its normal schedule next week.
