I for one welcome our new pirate overload

This election was an interesting one, it’s the first one I took a great deal of interest in, and that was made possible mainly through The Yorker and it’s Sky News approach to campus journalism (report lots of news quickly, although I was surprised to see Nouse beat The Yorker in getting the results up. Hell, I heard the result on URY, refreshed Nouse and it was there. That was quick.), despite the fact I had qualms with some of The Yorker’s earlier news coverage of the campaigns. Being on placement, I couldn’t be in York to see the campaigning, attend hustings and generally get caught up in election fever, but thanks to the brilliantness of the Nouse twitter-style micro-blog updates and URY it made no difference I’m 200 miles from York in Oxford. I felt there, I got excited as the presidential results got closer, and everytime I head AMC’s wonderful Donny accent (oh how I miss home), and then was trying to count up the scores in my head as the individual college results for Kunwar, Payne and Scott was called, then decided it was too close to call. Then the Mad Cap’n won, and we had a pirate SU president-elect. Then his victory speech, I was hanging on his every word

I never wanted to be here. Somehow I’ve got in

People keep asking me, am I going to take the job and the answer is…

Oh shit, is he going to turn it down, is Payne going to get the job after all and it’ll just be yet another YUSU next year?

Yes

This means real change for YUSU. Real change. These elections had a greater turnout than any other University in the country, some have accused Scott of having a very clever campaign. I think he just inadvertantly tapped into the apathetic masses.

People are now condemning those who voted for the Mad Cap’n for turning the University into a laughing stock and YUSU into a joke. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think Scott has the real potential to get students more involved in YUSU, and as some of his writings (albeit in the style of a pirate) and his debating in the Club of PEP presidential debate prove, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s been in student societies, he’s an average student who happens to have run Britain’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day for the past 5 years and ran for the comedy value of being a pirate.

Although not the candidate I ended up voting for, I applaud that Scott is our new SU president, and I hope that he lives up to his potential.

As I write this, I’ve noticed a group calling for his immediate resignation and to call a by-election has been called – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11137553271. I really hope that Tom does not bow to that presumably vocal minority and pays attention to the majority who voted him in.

I was going to write a long blog based around the campus media, and how the introduction of The Yorker has helped the traditional media by adding some competition to the existing world, especially helping improving from printed media to more web-based (see, Vision’s Facebook application and Nouse’s now more frequently updated website, which now has an increased set of commenters), but I’m absolutely buzzing from the result and listening to it on URY and following the election on the Nouse micro-blog all night, and my head’s all over the place right now. Sorry if this is a bit scattered!

Next year promises to be interesting.