OPINION: Not a single ticket is running for this year’s OUSA election. Critic has won its long war on OUSA election tickets and are in the process of killing all our horses, saying goodbye to the trenches and boarding the steamer for home.
In the past three years, a total of 30 OUSA Exec positions have been elected. 26 of those went to a candidate on a ticket. There were undoubtedly some good candidates on those tickets, but there were also a lot of bad candidates, particularly in the 10 hour roles, who rode in on the coattails of their tickets. Hopefully the ticket-less election will mean we see a higher calibre of exec member next year as candidates will be forced to run on their own policies and strengths as an individual.
This does not mean that a lot of the candidates in the election aren’t heavily associated with OUSA or know each other. As the image above shows, a lot of the people who are running already know each other, and that’s fine. People who are already clued in about OUSA and involved with student politics have a greater knowledge base to bring the role and people who know each other can support each other through running for the exec, which is a difficult thing to do.
Critic has been campaigning against tickets ever since large successful tickets caused some of the most dysfunctional execs in recent history, gloriously epitomised in the “Real Change” ticket, whose President and Vice-President had a massive falling out in 2016, leading to the President refusing to step foot on OUSA property.
Recently the exec refused to vote to ban or limit tickets, despite students voting in favour of banning them last referendum, and despite the recommendation of OUSA’s own Elections Review Committee to limit tickets. As Colleges Officer Norhan El Sanjak admitted, “We were all on a ticket; we might be a bit biased”.
However, not a single ticket emerged come election time. Critic’s long and exhausting fight seems to be over. One of the candidates currently running told me that running on a ticket this election was considered “career suicide”. Good. As Sam McChesney so elegantly put it in 2017, “Fuck tickets. Fuck them in every damn hole”.
However, tickets may be dead, but they could still rise from the grave. There’s nothing stopping tickets returning for next year’s election and starting the cycle of shitty execs all over again. Hopefully next year an exec that didn’t all get in on a ticket might actually vote to ban them and hammer a stake through that particular vampire for good.