William Bleveans: Crowded USAC election field likely to contribute to debased discourse

This year’s crowded field of undergraduate student government candidates may put the 17-strong field of 2016’s Republican presidential primary to shame.

Eight candidates are running for Undergraduate Students Association Council president this year: five as independents, one from an established campus political slate and two from untested slates. Four candidates are running for external vice president and three for internal vice president. In total, 39 candidates are running for USAC this year, the most in the last five years.

Despite the unusually high number of candidates, some students involved in USAC maintain that this year’s election will be no different than previous ones. Aaron Boudaie, the current USAC Financial Support commissioner and an independent candidate for USAC president, was sanguine about the prospects for civil debate in such a crowded election.

“It’s great that there are so many candidates in the race,” he said. “Having more candidates will help, because it will lessen infighting.”

Boudaie and students who share his opinion have it wrong, however. It is mistaken to assume political debate in this year’s USAC elections will be any more meaningful or productive just because more candidates are running for office. In fact, the glut of candidates in this year’s elections will degrade campus discourse and sow confusion among students, who are already disengaged from campus politics.

Perhaps a few pie-in-the-sky candidates here and there do not degrade campus elections. This year, however, there are far too many, and campus political discourse will suffer as a result.

As the election season begins in the coming days, the eight candidates running for the office of USAC president will have to put forth eight distinct platforms and offer unique visions for student government if they hope to distinguish themselves. Candidates running for other highly contested positions will be confronted with the same challenge. Unfortunately, electoral incentives will probably reduce political discourse to an incoherent cacophony of opinions.

With so many distinctive proposals thrown around, candidates will not be able to engage in the political back-and-forth that is so essential to election discourse. Moreover, a crowded field will degrade election discourse because candidates will be incentivized not to speak the most eloquently, but to speak the loudest.

The correlation between a crowded field of candidates and political discourse dominated by ad hominem attacks is clear to anyone who witnessed the last Republican presidential primary. To set themselves apart from their competitors, the Republican candidates had to launch personal attacks and constantly ratchet up their rhetoric, tarnishing political discourse in the process. The upcoming California gubernatorial primary, which has at times devolved into shouting matches between Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, also bears witness to the corrosive effects a large field of candidates has on political discourse.

As if that wasn’t enough, too many candidates running for USAC positions will make it more difficult for students to identify individual candidates and their platforms. USAC officers already have very low name recognition among the student body, and it is doubtful a field of 39 candidates will help much.

Some students, Boudaie included, have argued that having a larger number of candidates is evidence of greater student engagement in USAC politics, which in turn will make election discourse more civil. However, the fact that many independent candidates are running is not necessarily a sign that ordinary, apolitical students are engaging in the election process.

In reality, many of the independent candidates running this year have extensive experience in campus politics. Boudaie, for one, is an independent candidate who was the 2017 Bruins United nominee for Financial Support commissioner. Ashraf Beshay is an independent presidential candidate who has been closely affiliated with USAC this year and was the 2017 Bruins United nominee for transfer student representative. Jamie Kennerk, the chair of the UCLA chapter of the California Public Interest Research Group, and Nicole Corona Diaz, currently a USAC general representative, are two candidates for external vice president who have substantial experience in student government.

Moreover, some of the candidates this supposed surge of grassroots enthusiasm has produced apparently do not plan to keep the election discourse civil. In fact, Andrew Sokoler, a candidate for USAC general representative from the Candidates Operating Clearly slate, claimed many students running for USAC are corrupt.

“Most candidates are corrupt,” he said. “The ones who get caught just don’t watch their backs.”

Sokoler’s brash language suggests he may focus more on attacking his opponents than offering substantive policy proposals. Not surprisingly, his rhetoric resembles the debased discourse Americans saw in 2016.

While it hopefully won’t be as raucous as the last Republican presidential primary, this year’s USAC election promises to be just as crowded. The excess of candidates running for student government positions will likely flood the campus with meaningless discourse.

When this election season concludes, quantity will have come at the expense of quality.