After winning the ASUO Executive elections in “a fucking landslide” last month, president-elect Adam Walsh and vice president-elect Kyla Coy went immediately about the business of leadership and reform.
They began soliciting feedback from student groups and the student body at large. I just hope they remember they got their most important feedback on election night from the voters who put them in office. The message was, put simply: “Student government sucks. Fix it.”
This election was all about accountability and responsibility. Though there were a number of tickets in the primary election, one could break it down into the Ashley Rees and Jael Anker-Lagos ticket against everybody else.
Rees-Anker-Lagos had both served with the ASUO before and cast themselves as insiders — the ones who know how to get things done. They promised their knowledge of and experience with the ASUO would make them the most effective executives.
All the other tickets campaigned as outsiders, wearing their lack of ASUO association as a badge of honor.
In a year when some student leaders fancied themselves as “cocky, smooth, motherfuckers” who could drink alcohol and smoke marijuana at an incidental fee-funded trip that was supposed to be dry, casting oneself as an ASUO insider may not have been the smartest political move.
In a year when student leaders vowed to take “group responsibility” for the Sunriver incident and then failed to meet even the meager
requirements of their self-imposed punishments, voters reasonably questioned whether ASUO insiders can
actually get anything done.
And in a year when the budget process seized the Constitution and ran it through a shredder of political correctness and cheap politicking, the last thing voters wanted to do was send student leaders back into office.
The voters clearly called for reform of student government in this election.
In the primaries, Rees-Anker-
Lagos got more votes than any other ticket. But all the other tickets, which ran on platforms centered around ASUO reform, comprised a majority of the votes. It seemed that those who wanted reform outnumbered those who wanted the status quo. They just hadn’t all agreed on which reformer they wanted.
Walsh-Coy advanced to the general election with Rees-Anker-Lagos. All the eliminated candidates except one announced support for Walsh-Coy. They gave speeches and sent out Facebook messages on behalf of the ticket. Those candidates who had campaigned so hard against each other just days before were now united in trying to bring about the election of Walsh-Coy and to defeat business as usual in the ASUO.
This shows just how seriously these candidates regarded their reform agendas. They were willing to invest their resources and energy even though they had nothing personally to gain. Rather than be sore losers, they put differences aside to advance the cause of ASUO reform.
The voters had called for reform and candidates were responding. Come the general election, with the support of his former rivals, Walsh pulled in nearly two-and-a-half times more votes than he had in the primary, while Rees-Anker-Lagos pulled in 6 percent fewer.
The self-styled underdogs had defeated an opponent that had spent more than twice as much money. It wasn’t slick campaigning or popularity that pulled in a victory for Walsh-Coy. The voters liked the message.
I didn’t get a chance to drop a note in Adam Walsh’s suggestion box. If I did, though, it would say, “Remember how you got here.” The work of reform is slow, and Walsh’s term will be over in one short year.
He needs to hit the ground running and take seriously the charge that voters have given him. He needs to crack down on the unprofessional, unstructured and sometimes illegal behavior of the student government.
And while a well-run student government that respects the very laws it’s elected to administer will probably provide me with fewer topics for juicy, angry, scandalous columns, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

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