Cambridge Common

You can see from reading a lot of the writing that has taken place here in the last week and a half (including mine) that there's a common language and interest that suddenly comes out during these public elections. If you think about it, the campaigns are essentially a small community of people having a conversation (the Council, the candidates, student group leaders, Crimson/blog writers and campaign staffs) and a lot of other people watching confused, interested, amused, disgusted, all of the above or simply not caring at all. This little community, especially the UC/Crimson community, essentially spend 8 months out of the school year having these conversations and for a month every year we parade them about and try to win or influence elections. As a result, it's not clear to me (or it has struck me) that this little community may or may not have any idea how to communicate with others about its issues. Maybe this, not an actual frustration with the Council, that makes people like outsider candidates. It's not that they're self is uncorrupted by the evil system, but it's just their language that has been. Outsiders don't talk as if an audience has an assumed level of knowledge about the topic (often because they themselves don't); they don't throw around acronyms and committees without explaining or they simply don't through them around. A whole lot of us do...

You can't really blame anyone. Think about if you had to parade your community's debates around for campus once a year. But still, it's entertaining to watch people try and struggle to shift into mass-communication mode when you spend the rest of your year in meetings and committees, writing legislation and generally doing your job... No wonder Senators don't often get elected.