By: Elliot Fung
If you are a full-time undergraduate student enrolled in at least 18 units, you are eligible to vote in this year’s McMaster Students Union presidential election. Here is some more information about the election and how you can successfully cast your ballot.
The president is the primary spokesperson for the MSU and serves as the representative for McMaster students to the university, Hamilton and the provincial and federal government.
The next MSU president will hold the position for a one-year term beginning on May 1, 2019 and ending on April 30, 2020.
The MSU president is also the chair of the board of directors of the Student Representative Assembly, which is comprised of the vice president (Finance), vice president (Administration) and vice president (Education).
This year’s election has four candidates: Madison Wesley, Jeffrey Campana, Josh Marando and Justin Lee. More information about their platforms can be found here.
The voting system will be “single transferable vote.” What this means is that, on your ballot, you will get to rank candidates in order of preference.
In particular, you will have the opportunity to rank your preference of candidate from one to four. However, you do not have to rank all candidates.
Your vote will count towards the candidate you rank first.
The candidate with a majority of total first choice votes will be the president-elect. If a majority is not achieved through the initial counting, the candidate with the least number of first-choice votes is eliminated.
However, if you voted for the eliminated candidate, your ballot still counts. Your vote will be transferred to your second-choice candidate. Votes are then recounted.
If a majority is still not achieved, the process of vote transfer is repeated until a candidate has a majority of first choice votes.
Should a candidate be disqualified or withdraw from the election after polling takes place, your vote will still count too as long as you indicated a second-choice candidate.
In this case, your vote would be transferred to your second-choice candidate.
Voting opens on Jan. 22 and closes on Jan. 24 at 5 p.m. Ballots are being sent out via email, so check your McMaster email as soon as you get the chance!
You can also vote at www.msumcmaster.ca/vote. Log in using your Mac ID and an election link will appear if you are eligible to vote.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
I’ll be honest. I went through a borderline snobbish phase concerning music. Mainstream tunes were overrated, and if you hadn’t heard of the Blue-Speckled Egg Boys — I wouldn’t be surprised if this band actually exists — then we could not have a civilized conversation. It’s fine to go through this hipster phase if it remains just that: a phase. It becomes a problem when you remain a member of the I’m-better-than-you-Taylor-Swift-plebians crowd. Sooner or later, you realize that your family is done with your shit, and your pre-set Indie stations will have been deleted from every radio in the house. None of your friends want to hear about the new Speckled Egg album, and you have no one to take to your lo-fi dream pop neo-jazz underground festival.
I no longer classify myself as a judgmental music snob. I threatened to become one, but got over it after being exposed to other music snobs. Jimmy Kimmel conducted an experiment at Coachella 2013. He asked people about bands that were “obscure” (because they were fictional) and festival attendees claimed to known and went on to praise their music. When I saw where I was headed — what I could become — I had to take a step back and evaluate why I was so harsh on the One Directioners of the world. I still personally don’t like the (in)famous boyband, but what’s so bad about liking their music? Enjoying “One D” does not necessarily make you a less cultured person. I can understand why people enjoy their music; it’s toe-tapping, head-nodding fun! Music is meant to create an inclusive and interactive space for everyone. Who are we to judge others for their tastes when we know Iggy Azalea’s rap in “Fancy” by heart? (Remember, the first stage of grief is denial, fellow snobs!)
When I saw where I was headed — what I could become — I had to take a step back and evaluate why I was so harsh on the One Directioners of the world.
When addressing music-snobbery, there is a lesson to be learned from an unlikely source: Justin Bieber. His new style has attracted many former and current music snobs who claim to appreciate his musical transformation — as everyone should. This is despite most of us having wanted to stick a dagger in the car radio as soon as “Baby” started playing. There seems to be no point in judging an artist’s new work based on their past offenses. Thank you Bieber for showing us that good music can come from unexpected places.
My message to you is to just be real and honest. There’s nothing wrong with saying you haven’t listened to the latest Weeknd album yet just as there’s nothing wrong with belting “Shake it Off” in the shower. I’m not judging, and let’s hope that others aren’t either. After all, what good comes out of being so exclusive? Best case, you just lose potential fellow concert-goers, and in the worst case, friends.
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
[adrotate banner="16"]
[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]
“Do you only date people from your own background?” my friend asked. I’d like to think the answer to that question is no. My partners have all been radically different from each other — in personality and appearance — and I’ve never been accused of having a “type,” but one thing I had never really thought about was that most of my partners so far have been white.
I’m not alone in my apparent habits. OKCupid data from 2009 to 2014 shows that the vast majority of members had either a preference or indifference towards dating someone from their own race. However, the data also shows us something a little bit nastier: 82 percent of heterosexual non-Black men said that they weren’t interested in being matched with Black women, and Asian and Black men were significantly less popular among heterosexual female users. This may be information from only one website, and for a set number of years, but it is indicative of wider trends in the way we approach our relationships.
It’s not terribly surprising that racism seeps into all aspects of our society, including our romance, but you might be wondering why your preferences are a big deal. Discriminating against someone in a job interview most likely has a larger impact on them than deciding not to ask them to dinner (also, if you aren’t interested in dating someone because of their race, I’m willing to bet that person isn’t all that interested in getting a meal with you anyway). However, we can’t say that racial preferences in romance have no effect whatsoever. In her article for Vice magazine about the experience of being a Black woman on Tinder, Eternity Martis talks about the impact that racism has on a user’s self esteem. Being hypersexualized, tokenized and fetishized from all angles when looking for a relationship understandably takes a toll on one’s feelings of self worth.
Martis is not alone in her experiences, which are unfortunately not uncommon. This begs the question: if our preferences are not random, and are instead part of larger societal trends, where do they come from? Some explanations might include evolutionary psychology, but if humans are programmed to be attracted to physical prowess and symmetry, why should this exclude People of Colour? Another explanation might be that we are interested in people from our own racial background, but if this was the case then we wouldn’t see specific discriminatory trends in dating patterns.
Instead the answer is exactly what you would expect: ubiquitous White supremacist beauty standards. We can see the ways this manifests in media representation. How often do we see Asian men as romantic leads in Hollywood blockbusters? On television shows, how often are Black women described as “the one”? When you can count the number of interracial couples in contemporary media on one hand, it starts to make sense why racism might make its way into our dating lives.
At this point you may be feeling insecure about your preference for brunettes, or wondering if you have been fetishizing that tall guy you see in the student center based on his height. Don’t fret. Having preferences is not the same thing as discriminatory dating. I’m not proposing that we should all date people we aren’t attracted to in order to prove a point, nor am I demanding that you change something you may have no control over such as what features you are attracted to. People in interracial relationships are not necessarily more enlightened than the rest of us, and people who date those from their own backgrounds are not necessarily more racist. What I’m asking instead is for us to take a step back, and look at our race-based preferences critically. Let’s demand better representation in our media, expect respectful interactions on dating websites, and think twice before we dismiss someone as “not our type.”
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal
[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]
