Five simple steps to winning an SGA office

It's that time of year again; time for everyone to be beyond burnt out from school and talk about how tough it is to skip the beautiful weather and go to class.

Well, that's true, but, it's not what the signs are about. It is in fact time to elect our new fearless leaders-the executives of Tech's Student Government Association.

As an expert in campaigning and elections, as most sports editors are, I feel that it is my duty to help guide all of the candidates on the path to victory. This path to victory is in no way guaranteed, nor is it necessarily even good, but don't question the expert.

First, it is important to recognize that this election will be transformed by the greatest innovation of the past year-the facebook. Doing a brief and scientific survey of the candidates, some of them are not even listed on thefacebook.com My advice to them is to act quickly as they are quickly falling behind.

They are not able to campaign by "poking" unsuspecting members of the Tech community (who respond by having no clue whatsoever as to what this means) or forming groups like "Only cool kids vote for John Smith for president" to intimidate their opponents.

As in all political campaigns, it's important to have friends, and what better way is there to quantify your friends and your entire life value than an online connection that is eerily similar to a bad dating service.

After properly getting on the facebook and making friends with everyone he or she might have ever known, a candidate is probably wondering what to do next. Well, I looked at the signs for inspiration for the next step in the process. The candidates all had one thing in common; they have names.

See, the tricky thing about these elections is they are kind of like the race for judge in the local elections. No one is associated with a party, there are a lot of people running and a majority of the voters probably do not really know the people among which they are making their decision.

As a result, most voters just pick the candidate with the best name; something pronounceable and distinguished like say Abraham Lincoln Smith. You may think it's crazy, but think back to the last election, you know it's true. Candidates, if your name is not like this, I suggest that you change it, quickly.

But not all voters look solely at names; some actually look at issues. It appears there is a trend toward designing websites to deal with these pesky voters that actually care about a candidate's platform. Don't pick a domain name like "AbrahamLincolnSmith4presGTSGA0506.com." First, that's way too long for anyone to remember, and second, if you lose, what on earth are you going to use that domain name for? Exactly. So, now that you've got a website that you can actually use again, regardless of the outcome, you actually have to start thinking about a platform.

First, remember that the SGA president serves a one-year term, so pick something you can actually do in one year. Perhaps something lofty like "I will attend all meetings for the whole entire year unless there is a good basketball game on or my friends want to go out and do something" would work here.

Of course, most people won't actually care about your platform that much, or if they do, they'll attend a debate where you can make up all sorts of wacky-sounding ideas and then make them sound like a terrifically rational thought for at least a few days.

What is more important than the issues is to have a good slogan. Or a good war story. A bad combination choice in this matter would be "I'm John Smith, and I'm reporting for duty." If you use this, you're guaranteed to lose, no matter what.

If you send out a mass email to all sorts of people that do not know you, absolutely no one will or should vote for you-not one, regardless of your promises of enhanced performance. And upon the rare chance that you win, I will use the little strength I have in me to make sure you are referred to as John-who-should-have-to-walk-on-burning-coals-and-shattered-glass-for-all-eternity Smith.

Okay, maybe not, but at least it made you think twice before you sent out that email, huh?