A lot has been said recently about the Student Association. I guess it was inevitable I would have to add my two cents.

Just so nobody gets confused, I think the way the SA works and the way elections ran this year both suck. Now before the members of the SA and Joint Elections Committee, their family, friends, supporters, cronies, associates, childhood sweethearts, next-door neighbors and first grade teachers start telling me how they all sacrificed their academic standings, social lives, nap times, emotional well beings and chances of achieving salvation, I’d like to remind these people that they volunteered for these positions.

Taking on responsibility – especially public positions – means that you agree to accept criticism. You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. I’d even say all these hacks (and they are hacks – the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem) have succeeded in pissing off all of the people this time. Stop whining about all the abuse you’ve taken for the rest of us. The rest of us don’t care, and if you don’t like it, you can quit and be replaced by tomorrow morning. Hacks come a dime a dozen at GW.

I would now like to move into an attack on specific elements of the campaign. Let’s review what’s already pretty clear: Palm carding – no one likes it. Next year the JEC should just ban it. Don’t take a student opinion poll. Don’t take a vote. Just ban it. If some geek takes the JEC to student court about violations of the SA constitution, just give him a one-way ticket to a Star Trek convention.

Next, get rid of the candy and soda – it’s insulting to think that I’m going to change my vote for a lollipop. The last thing I need when I’m late to class is a lacrosse stick in my face and a bucket of Coke to trip over. (Oh, and if whether J Street serves Coke or Pepsi is the biggest concern you have, I’d advise you to stop sniffing glue.) And stop putting crap in my mailbox, it all ends up on the residence hall lobby floor anyway.

Finally, let’s take a look at the campaign ads in The GW Hatchet from just before the latest – and hopefully final – round of elections. There’s no reason to drag Sesame Street’s Count into the election quagmire. Did anyone even get permission to use this presumably copyrighted cultural icon? What’s the number for the Public Broadcasting Corporation’s legal department?

Out of curiosity, did anyone’s vote change when they found out which candidate received the Recess and Students for a Free Tibet endorsements? And hypocrisy isn’t much more obvious than when you use a negative ad to attack the other candidate’s negative ads.

How about next year we get rid of all the clever little ads SA candidates run. With their razor-sharp wit and incisive political analysis, I don’t even know why they’re wasting their time at GW. Perhaps if we can get David Letterman to take them off our hands, we can finally have a group of candidates who don’t make the Los Angeles Lakers look like type-B personalities.

Of course, I’m just a regular GW student, so the chances of anyone in the SA caring about my opinion are about as good as the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series.

-The writer is a junior majoring in English.