As student body president campaigns kick into high gear, candidates must make a concerted effort to have a friendly, cordial election season.
It is the candidates’ responsibility to make sure this year remains free of the shenanigans that plagued last year’s student elections.
Student government would lose a great deal of credibility if debates again devolved into the tiresome back-and-forth that dominated headlines last year.
The joke at the time was that the election was three clowns short of a circus — but then one of the candidates actually rode through the Pit on a pony.
Last year’s saga of infractions, student lawsuits and bullying did nothing to help the candidates involved.
But it did a great deal to corrode the legitimacy of student government as a whole.
UNC students enjoy an exceptional level of self-governance when compared to our peers: an entirely student-run honor system, a vigorous student legislative body to shape the Student Code and a robust executive branch.
We have a student attorney general, a student speaker of Congress and even a student chief of staff.
Most importantly, however, we have a student body president who is a voting member of the Board of Trustees.
