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28 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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Another year; another election
Feds election season has begun and students haven't shown much interest in runing. With nine candidates for four executive postions, we have the lowest turnout of candidates in five elections. Students coming out to vote hasn't been so good either. In the 37 years of Feds history last years turnout of 14.9% is the sixth lowest in history. Five of the six lowest voter turnouts have been in the past six years. The few candidates that there are will have to meet the challenge of getting voters out. Then those who win will have to meet the challenge of engaging the student interest for next year. The best solution I can suggest for that is what candidates have acknowledged as an important issue this election, communication. Candidates should take the words of Thomas Jefferson to heart. He wrote, "Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them." By communicating with students they can be engaged and interested in their student organization, Feds. Students will only be able to care about Feds if they know about it. Student interest will therefore be based on communication. It is easy for candidates to say that commnication is important, but candidates must answer questions of how. How will they improve communication? The current executives know, acknowledge, and state the importance of communication, but I and others have said that they could do better at it. What prevents Feds exec from communicating better and what makes candidates think they can overcome this? This is the question that must be answered before we can be confident that this year's candidates will be able to communicate better.
Arts endowment The Faculty of Arts is the last faculty without some kind of student controlled endowment. The first one was engineering with WEEF fourteen years ago. This one in arts has been a long time in coming. While some students may disagree with having to contribute money or specific funding allocations, not one can reasonably oppose providing more resources to education. Those concerns are ameliorated by the nature of student endowments at UW. The first concern with paying the fee is addressed by the fee being refundable. The second concern on what is funded is adressed by the opportunity to get invovled in the funding decisions. Students probably have the most say in endowment funding compared to any other funds spent on education at UW. |