Why you should never nominate yourself for guild president

Yes, it’s that time again when you’re constantly bombarded with leaflets outside the Sydney Jones.  The Guild nominations close tomorrow and you can almost taste the excitement around campus at the prospect of a new president.

This year’s team

There’s nothing wrong with electing a guild president – we live in a democracy after all – but surely our future president should be nominated by fellow students rather than nominees putting themselves forward? The point is we want them to represent us rather than fuelling their own egos.

Not to state the obvious but it would be better for nominees to actually be nominated, rather than running because they put themselves forward.  No matter how enthusiastic a person is, if they nominate themselves that fundamentally defeats the object of having guild nominations at all.  Surely it would be more democratic for people to be nominated by others?

Question Time last year

As part of a supposedly left wing university this would certainly make more sense. It all feels a bit like when Gordon Brown decided to be the next PM after Tony Blair. The definition of a nomination should be that someone else thinks you’d be good for the job- not that you think you’d be really good so you’ll give it a go.

Only a small number of students actually bother with the guild elections anyway, which is sad considering representation in the guild is important as students are affected by decisions the guild makes. I’m sure nominees who have put themselves forward have the best intentions for students and aren’t doing it for their CV, but it would make their campaign a lot more convincing if they had actually been nominated.

Whatever nominee’s motivation and however good they are for the job it would be much more persuasive to let others decide on their suitability, rather than their own ego making that decision for us.

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