The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, March 17, 1978, Page page 4, Image 4
page 4 daily ncbraskan friday, march 17, 1978 ASUN results lose student interest with slow return Thirty-five students will have a nice surprise waiting for them when they return from spring break. By that time, they officially should know if they have been elected to the 1978-79 ASUN senate. We hope they're not holding their breaths, because we'd hate to see them suffocate. The ASUN Electoral Commission announced early Thursday night that they would not have election results tallied until sometime late Thursday night. By that time, it was too late for the Daily Nebraskan deadline. Since the newspaper probably is the most comprehensive method for informing students, those who are anxious to learn, of election results will have to wait until they return from a nine-day spring vacation. Besides, waiting to announce elec tion results until some time last night or today will miss a lot of students who leave early for vacation. . . not to mention holding up the plans of senatorial candidates whose next move depends on election results. We suppose this is not of too much importance to the majority of students, since about only 14 per cent of the student body voted in Wednesday's election. But to those who do care, and to us, whose job is to inform our readers of the news as soon as possible if not sooner this is intolerable. Without knowing who his new senate is, we wonder how president elect Ken Marienau will be able to get any kind of senate groundwork started until the end of the month. A two-week delay could hamper a government with goals as ambitious as those of Marienau. A student government that cannot even tell its constituents who their new representatives are until a day and a half after the election needs some serious examination. We realize that hand-counting ballots is a ted ious, time consuming job, but surely some kind of more efficient system can be set up. Perhaps this would be a good pro ject for Marienau's new senate to tackle. It looks like this lack of ex pediency in announcing election results may hinder the senate in get ting off to a good start. We certain ly hope not. Marienau has said that he wants to expand student services. We suggest that the ASUN president elect start with his own home terri tory, and do something to improve the present electoral process in time for next year's election. Joke parties tickle fancy in otherwise boring campaigns Now that the voting is over, I'll get around to writing my ASUN election analysis. (We all have these off weeks, you know.) I voted a straight ARF ticket Wednes day. "Arf" is what my dog says when he wants to go outside. I always listen to him, so the vote came naturally. rr i i walde 3 I was a bit disappointed with this year's election. The straight candidates always are disappointing in their annual pursuit of the coveted law school recommendation. But the joke parties often are the best entertainment this side of Cinema X. ARF (A Real Farce) and POOR (Poor One On down the hatch for the Regents) started the campaign well, but they rapidly degenerated into seriousness. And, given the skimpiest election coverage in recent years by this newspaper, it was hard to keep track of what any of the candidates were doing. Past campaigns have been more interest ing. The Yippies (Youth International Party) set the pattern "in 1970. They promised draft beer in residence halls and Greek houses and free joints to anyone who asked. This latter promise would be made possible by seceding from the United States and legalizing marijuana. To explain the absence of its presiden tial candidate from a debate, the party claimed that he was kidnapped by the opposition. The next year the Rocket Grease and Freedom Party -an offshoot of a '50s rock 'n' roll band, Rick and the Rockets made the best showing of any joke party this decade. Party candidates wore greased back duckbill hair, distributed a coloring book instead of a platform and campaigned for pencil sharpeners in all classrooms. Shaman Jack Mason in 1973 picked up the Yippies' theme of surrealism with his two-member Surrealist Light People's Party (SLPP). Mason passed out autographed bananas at rallies, led debate audiences in chants of "Out, demons. Out!" and prom ised that his platform would be built with a reinforced-concrete base covering most of the Coliseum. "UNL was a low -budget movie inhabited by a minority of humans, a majority of androids and 'them'," Mason asserted. "Them" are the movie directors who pro gram the androids to think they are human. Mason's main theme was to remove androids from student government. He also offered this solution to the coed visi tation issue: a sheep on every dorm floor, the SLPP campaign took a dark turn when Mason announced that an evil force was trying to turn his running mate Willie Wonka into a Frito corn chip. In 1974. an old Greasr and reedom candidate. Ron Sindclar. ran for all three exeuctive slots as the United for One (UFO) party. He stressed the perennial issue of pencil sharpeners in every class room. As the party leader, he said he was optimistic about ASUN; as second vice president he said ASUN was an ego trip for candidates; the first vice-presidential candidate was unavailable for comment. UFO faced competition from the CLAP party (Celibacy, Lysterine and Anti-Permissiveness). CLAP pledged to give each ASUN senator (there would be fo.000 of ballot forced the group into a serious campaign. Nearing election day, though, PAP returned to its principles and "manned" its campaign booth with a mannequin head. The PAP standard bearer was the university's IBM-360 computer. When the Rag ran pictures of candidates, it included a mug shot of the computer's control panel. Farlier in 1973-74, student voters :v tense S&R J '4 l) : yr sl J Daily Nebraskan photo The two-member Surrealist Light People's Party, Jack Mason and Willie Wonka (on the right), go bananas during the 1973 ASUN election. They are one of several joke parties in recent years that have used humorous gimmicks to illustrate the absurdity they see in student government. them) a gavel to hammer with anda red and white Husker beanie, topped off by a propeller. Also, they would supply campus security with half-tracks to use in enfor cing a proposed ban on free pinball games, which they termed "too permissive." The 1975 ASUN race found Five parties in the field. None of them were strictly joke parties. The Pro-Apathy Party (PAP) started with that intention (reiterating the need for pencil sharpeners) but election rules which kept the party initials off the proved their respect for tradition by elect ing a male as Homecoming Queen. The sponsoring organization declared him ineli gible, but the hairy-faced queen gained his crown back with an appeal to ASUN Stu dent Court. The court got a further workout in the spring '74 election with a PAP lawsuit against campaign rules. After that the court became the election centerpiece. The joke party in 1976 was one of the best, although it lacked the flamboyance of Shaman Jack and his bananas. The Stupid Americans Party (SAP) quoted Oscar Wilde: "There is more to be said for stupidity than people can imagine." It claimed to have a natural constituency because "most people associ ated with UNL are stupid to be here." As such, SAP promised to deal with the administration on its own level stupidity. SAP pledged to establish diplomatic relations with Mongolia and install pay toilets in each residence hall and Greek house. The real joke that year, though, was the "Greek Slate." It was a secret list circu lated at fraternities and sororities which endorsed Greek candidates from all parties. The slate nearly swept the election. The leaders of the four losing parties called the winner, Bill Mueller, imcompe tent. He called them yahoos. The losers immediately challenged the results in student court. Failing at this, they petitioned for a referendum to transfer all powers and duties of ASUN to a group called the Coalition for University Reform (CUR), which the losers created after the election. The petition drive succeeded, but the court declared it unconstitutional and CUR faded away in a Fit of grumbling. Earlier that year another homecoming election featured both King and Queen candidates. But Daily Nebraskan cartoon character Ralph Crabtree won a smashing victory with a write-in campaign for the king spot, and a write-in from a residence hall was voted queen after a campaign which protested the lack of dormies on the ballot. The Greek Slate circulated again last year, but failed this time. Again the main factor in the election was Student Court even more so this time. Leftover election losers from the year before filed suit to abolish the ASUN senate on grounds that it had failed to have a quorum at meetings for more than three months. The court compromised and delayed the election for a month while ASUN corrected technical errors. No real joke parties ran last year. The closest thing was The High People's Coali tionLiberated Students for Democracy (THCLSD). The group ran a serious cam paign, but it did pick up the call for pencil sharpeners in each classroom. Before turning over his seat last year, ASUN President Mueller called the student government "a farce." 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