"Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" "Hoos for Billy!" How do these slogans really compare? American election slogans go back all the way to the 1840s when presidential candidate William Henry Harrison discovered the key to campaigning: swaying masses. The idea behind college elections is to emulate American democracy, but the similarities and differences between the two are more startling than we have been taught to think.
Propaganda tactics such as posters, stickers and rallies became prevalent early in our country's history, but over the years tactics have soared and surpassed unimaginable social expectations, leading our society down a path of superficiality and corruption. In the most recent presidential elections, campaign budgets spilled over into no man's land. Take Hillary Clinton, for example. She became so caught up in becoming a presidential candidate that she spent all of her campaign money and had to resort to funding her campaign with her own resources. The thing that strikes me as odd is the fact that ultimately stickers and "vote for me" posters do not explain any political positions; instead represent a form of materialistic competitiveness. Their primary purpose is to demonstrate which candidate is financially superior and, in the case of college elections, which candidate is more creative. During election season at the University, the McCormick quad is completely filled with flyer, the sidewalks are covered in multicolored chalk, Newcomb Hall's walls are plastered with flyers of all shapes and sizes, and walking to class means being bombarded with thousands of stickers that take hours to scrape off.
The irony of U.S. elections in comparison to college elections is the fact that even though national candidates are supposed to promote their agenda and set an example for student-modeled organizations around the world, they spend loads of money bashing other candidates. Clinton is one of the many political candidates who used excessive campaigning as a means for destroying her opponent. American elections appear deceptively appear good-natured, but in reality there are underlying struggles that remain invisible to the public eye. The elections are so open-ended that power-hungry candidates resort to devious means of campaigning. For example, television commercials burst with verbal aggression at adversaries and mailboxes overflow with degrading advertisements. Although University candidates are not passive when campaigning, they seem to have better morals and ethics than our national celebrities. Haider Arshad, a current class of 2014 vice presidential candidate, says "College elections remain positive throughout the entire process, whereas United States elections quickly turn sour, primarily because there are more boundaries upon colleges."
Big promises initiate many political discussions. I recall anxious listeners who were ready to pounce at Sarah Palin when she talked about depleting the Alaskan oil reserves during her 2008 debate with Joe Biden. The public reaction was far from spontaneous. American government, for as long as I can remember, has typically been associated with making thousands of pleasing or unpleasing promises that in the end were never even approached or discussed. It's easier to put the blame on the president or his cabinet, but they are not the primary reason for governmental failure. The fact that there are more problems in the United States than there are on Grounds makes it impossible to tackle every issue. Politicians' flaws come into play when they promise resolutions that they know will be hard to modify. Arshad differentiates between U.S. elections and college elections by saying that "College candidates have the privilege of staying connected to the concerns of each individual whereas senators deal with a much more global population and thus focus on generic concerns."
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