What a week it has been! I cried myself to sleep more than once, and had to delete a whole heap of student politicians from my friends list last night for the sake of my own mental health. It was a bit like when you go through and delete all of the spambots from your Twitter.
It became clear early on that the fact Pelican was covering guild elections this year made most candidates fairly uncomfortable. I wouldn’t exactly say that creating this discomfort was our intention, but I’m happy we were able to inform students in an unbiased way, and subject their future leaders to a bit of interrogation. Guild politicians don’t exactly save lives, but they are important. UWA doesn’t always have your best interests at heart, but your union does. Or should. So it stands to reason that future guild presidents, office bearers and councillors should be open to media scrutiny. Maybe it seemed like an attack, but I can assure you, we could have been way meaner.
Before this post reaches outgoing-Guild-President levels of self-congratulation, I should probably add that the Pelican team was totally naïve going into this experience. The more we scratched at the puffy scab that is the 2015 UWA Student Guild Election, the more it bled. And most of the time I kind of wished we’d just put a Band-Aid on it in the first place and walked away. I’m truly disgusted by what I’ve learned about both STAR and Launch candidates in this election. And I went into this experience expecting the worst.
I mean, I’m pretty sure that the only friend I made over the past 24 days was Cameron Payne. How would that make you feel?
The response we’ve received from students, though, has been universally positive. Never have I experienced so much BNOC notoriety. It has been truly heinous. If it is possible to capitalise on said notoriety, I’d like to do so by encouraging readers to contribute to the magazine! Student media is FUN! And powerful. Thousands of people read each of these 25 Days posts. We amassed about 800 new viewers per day. Pelican always wants new writers, from all faculties and from all political persuasions. Simply put, we want everybody. Even you, David Cann. Even you. Do those glasses hint at the soul of a wordsmith?
We’ll write a final wrap up post tomorrow when all the results are announced. Pelican’s sincere best wishes go out to everybody who ran in this election. It didn’t look easy.
Words by Kat Gillespie
Ps: Love u #CamPayne
You can contribute to Pelican by emailing [email protected]!