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09 January 2004
uwRyan.com This website is meant to provide value to UW student by delivering information. Please provide feedback on what I write as well as give me suggestions of topics to cover. You can send e-mail to me to ryan[at]uwryan[dot]com.
uwstudent.org
Federation of Students 
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To improve electionsFor better Feds, election coverage must improve
What kind of hiring process would you use for an job that involves taking interviews? The obvious answer is to interview candidates. The question should, however, highlight the shortcomings of interviewing in hiring for all other jobs, because to effectively evaluate people one must either observe performance in a similar job or translate behaviour from one place to another. This is the same challenge that students face, if they care, in Feds elections. Students must cast their vote based mainly on performance in a short campaign, which can be significantly different than performance in office. We, at Imprint and uwstudent.org, can improve election coverage beyond what is required by Feds and has been traditionally done to address obvious shortcomings to find relevant information, and highlight performance that is applicable to leading a student government. Under Feds election procedure the only information that must be provided to students is from candidate statements and forums. Candidates statements are adequate for basic information but are lacking. They could be prepared with the assistance of or entirely by people other than the candidate. Also candidates have significant time to prepare their statements and the topics covered are determined by those who write it. Forums address some of these problems. In forums candidates alone must respond in the short time similarly available to competing candidates and the issues discussed are determined by those asking the questions and not the candidates. Yet forums require attendance and attendance is lower than even those who vote. Coverage in the student press does add value, but more needs to be done. Imprint normally has coverage leading up to the elections and publishes statements and candidate interviews. uwstudent.org covers elections events, provides an online election forum, and offers an online forum to discuss issues. In improving this coverage, reporters must provide better access to existing information and change the process to aid translating performance in the campaign to performance in the Feds executive. Recordings, transcripts, or content from forums should be available, at least, on a website. Coverage should deal with the each candidate's character, qualities and abiliates, as well as, dealing with experience and relevant issues. These are challenges that student reporters need to meet to help students pick the best people. The Federation of Students has yet to meet many challenges and having the right people in the right places will help get us closer to doing that. |