[NCUC-DISCUSS] Candidate Statement

[Andrew A. Adams]

When I was an undergraduate student at the Unviersity of Leeds, the Students' 
Union had a rule that "RON" (Re-Open Nominations - effectively "None of the 
Above") must be a candidate in every election. In order to ensure that money 
(candidates could only spend the money provided by the union for campaigning 
on funding their campaign) did not "buy" the election for one of a slate of 
unpromising candidates there was a very interesting result: the RON campaign 
was also allocated campaign funding and so for each office an interested 
student was sought to campaing on behalf of RON, or Ron as they were usually 
known. Some of these campaigns were very skillfully done, though I never 
recall one actually winning and I suspect that if one ever did it would be a 
true negative vote against all the natural person candidates. Some of the 
campaigns were truly hilarious and added a nice humorous spice to sometimes 
dull campaigns for things like "Education Officers". Some RON campaign 
runners used it as practice runs for their own campaigns later, paraticularly 
those seeking to run as "campaign officer" - a post to run student awareness 
campaigns or student campaigns seeking changes to university policy, for 
example.

I'm happy to see that the spirit of such things is alive and well in NCUC and 
that we can still engage in the fun side of life amidst the tragedies of the 
real world. On a more sombre note my thoughts go out to our friends and 
colleagues in France and with close French ties.


-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/