10 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, November 6, 1998 FRIDAYFOCUS , al .t i Ooard of 70 cute and ciddlv stuffed ยข animals mad its way onto the ballot al diana Un :IV(rsitv. Candidates al the I biversity of Minlnesota laid ifl bed for hou rs just to greet pOtenllial Su pporters. Andu big spen ders at Ohio State ni Tversity are wil ing to Shell out more than $6,000 just for (a chance to win an unpakI student goverinent position. @, 5. ,.5 x 9 4ice q ' 9 _ . . ' t iI. Iw" at" I By Jcn ifer Yachtil andI Sarah Daily Staff ReItr LC v i Each year students spend hundreds of hours and pour thousands of dollars into cam- paigns throughout the Big Ten, vying for spaces in student government organizations. While only a fraction of University students vote in the annual Michigan Student Assembly elections, every student knows its election time when the floors of Angell Hall are littered with hundreds of fliers displaying snappy slogans. Fliers carpet walls, kiosks and even the floors of Big Ten schools during election season, but stu- dents at Indiana actually find candidates knocking on doors at all hours of the day as they charge down the campaign trail. Indiana University Students Association Vice President Brad Preamble described a "typical can- didate's day" as waking up at 6 a.m. to paint the campus with fliers before doing some door-to-door campaigning and finally ending the night with a meeting at the party headquarters. Party tickets "form through friendships, there's no ideology involved," Preamble said. Candidates can start as early as this month to form tickets, and official campaigning begins at the end of February with elections in late March or early April. "The tradition has been to form tickets of four executive officers," Preamble said. The main ticket includes a president, two vice-presidents and a trea- surer, who then recruit 70 assembly members. The party name is formed by using the first letter of the last names of the executive officer, Preamble said. Generally, two main parties run against each other and a "handful" of joke tickets also run, Preamble said. During the "Everyone i somethingI catches the students. " Minnesota Students In addition to flier advertising, candidates use mass e-mails, T-shirts and send out campaign liter- ature by way of pizza boxes. "There are always little complaints here and there," he said. "There's never been any total scan- dal or anything." Several schools use a graduated system of spend- ing limits, varied on the number of candidates run- ning on a ticket or slate. At the University of Iowa president and vice president candidates run on a joint ticket and are required to select one or two candidates for each of the three senate assemblies, said Sarah Pettinger, executive vice president of Undergraduate Activities Senate. Candidates are limited to $2,000 in spending with an additional $250 for each senate candidate. "Most of the money goes to ads in the Daily (Iowan) newspaper," Pettinger said. Two years ago, candidates brought a truckload of Ben and Jerry's ice cream to campus during the campaign to distribute to students, Pettinger said. The University of Minnesota only places spend- ing limits on its presidential and vice presidential candidates, said Nikki Kubista, president of the Minnesota Students Association. "The University has an $800 spending limit for presidential and vice presidential candidates, and they can be removed from office for exceeding the limits," Kubista said. triestodoCandidates are required to file an expense report to the I a Minnesota student gov- eye of the emnment to prove they are not exceeding the spending limits. Candidates for the 70 - Nikki Kubista representative seats tra- Association president ditionally "do not do a lot of campaigning," Kubista said. "I think that the race for president and vice president supersedes the rest of the election." Kubista said the Minnesota presidential tickets generally participate in chalking, postering and fliering and also take part in debates broadcast on the college radio station. During the month-and-a-half-long campaign period, candidates also stage activities such as putting on shows at the Minnesota student center and dressing as deceased U.S. presidents to gain attention during the campaign. "Everyone tries to do something that catches the eye of the students," Kubista said. At Indiana, candidates have spent $7 to 8,000 on campaigns in extreme cases, Preamble said. The competition for a student government posi- tion is created in part by the responsibility involved, Preamble said. Students work closely with Indiana administrators in "decisions making" and spend about 40 hours each week working on policies, committees and holding office hours. Nate Smith-Tyge, chair of the Associated Students of Michigan State University, said "there's sort of dull campaigning around here." "Our elections are sort of low-key," Smith-Tyge said. He said one reason for the low participation is that MSU does not "have the appeal of an all-uni- versity vote for president." But he said he hopes to "invigorate" the elections by trying to emphasize general election/voter awareness. 0l last IUSA elections the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy party ran on the platform of abolishing the IUSA and used stuffed animals as stand-ins for its congressional members. In addition to common methods of campaigning, IUSA candidates also purchase T-shirts, lease office suites for campaign headquarters and pay cellular phone bills. "They use the headquarters as a general meeting place for all the candidates," Preamble said. "It's hard to meet at somebody's house when you have 80 people." Slate members also give pep talks, Preamble said, and use the headquarters as "war rooms." IUSA revamped its election code this year to increase candidates' spending limits and create rules about voter fraud. "The spending limit was $2,500," Preamble said. The new restrictions allow the executive candi- dates to spend up to $1,000 with an additional $250 per representative on the ticket, creating a ceiling of $3,450 per slate. "The limit was too low with the amount of things that go on here," Preamble said. Spending money The image of the spend-thrifty college student is often lost during student government campaigning. All but one Big Ten university imposes spending limits on student government campaigns, which vary from $50 to more than $3,000. Ariel Friedler, president of Northwestern's Associated Student Government, said the $100 spending limit is designed to keep students from being swayed by extravagant campaigning. "The issue is that they want the students to vote ABOVE: During the 1997 spring elections for the Michigan Student Assembly, candidate William Nicholson takes a break to have lunch while campaigning. Students campaigning for seats on stu- dent govemments throughout the Big Ten often pull highjinks such as wearing sandwich boards, hosting student events and passing out free pizza to potential voters. RIGHT: Indiana Student Brian Cogswell helps his runningmate "Lionel P. Twinkles" during election season last spring. Both Cogswell and Twinkles ran as members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy party, whose platform consisted of abolishing the Indiana University Students Association. IUSA Vice President Brad Preamble said two main tickets usually campaign along with a handful of "joke tickets" such as the VRWC party. O' Courtesy UIdina Daily StuUent "There have been no real problems in a long time," Smith-Tyge said, except for one candidate cent for each additional penalty." who was re-elected despite some negative cam- To make sure candidates do not exceed spending paigning during the last election cycle. limits, each slate is required to file an expense report once during the campaign and again following the ument must be stamped by an election committee, Deitrick said. Candidates at Northwestern face forced resigna- tion if they are found breaking the relatively low $100 spending limit. "Three years ago one girl forged some receipts," Friedler said. She wanted to spend more on her campaign than the limit and ended up having to resign. 9, ! :> i ' t I s n