Prepare your apathy — it’s student government election season! Prospective candidates filed for Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) elections last week. Last year, an earth-shattering 34% of students turned out to vote on election day. The Occasionally is doing its part to increase this number by spotlighting some of the candidates who filed last week. Read on if you intend to participate in the most important election in the United States this year.
- Persis Drell in a mustache. It seems that communication between the University administration and ASSU hasn’t been great, so Provost Persis Drell has donned a fake mustache and monocle and gone undercover to try and understand the students. When asked for comment, Persis Drell in a mustache said, “Ok boomer.”
- Julián Castro ’96 and Gabe Rosen ’19. The two former Stanford senators have planned a triumphant return to the ASSU as part of an executive slate they call “The Boys Are Back.” In an exclusive interview with The Occasionally, Rosen admitted that law school hasn’t been all he had hoped: “It’s just read, read, read, work, work, work. There aren’t any lightsaber fights for campus-level political prominence. There aren’t even any lightsabers at all.” Castro, for his part, appears to be seeking a bid that he can actually win.
- New ASSU logo. Fresh off its new rebrand, the ASSU decided to run its new logo to raise awareness. Somewhere between the “slime” every seventh grader makes for their science fair and an illustration of an amoeba from a biology textbook, the logo seeks to redefine what the ASSU means to students.
- Two debate kids in a trench coat. It turns out that all of the suit-jacketed high schoolers crowding the Tresidder Starbucks last week were actually canvassers for their candidate of choice in the upcoming ASSU election: two debate kids in a trench coat. When asked about their campaign platform, both students simultaneously launched a well-rehearsed defense of drone attacks that had, for all its questionable ethics, absolutely stellar cadence. I’d vote for them.
- Composite freshman candidate. With the help of genetic data-mining technology pioneered by a TreeHacks semifinalist, the office of Residential Education successfully combined more than four billion data points to create an approximation of the average member of the class of 2023. The resulting average frosh lives in Twain, is thinking about studying Symbolic Systems and has had mono for the past 4 1/2 months. As far as a campaign platform, he is super concerned about increasing bike safety on campus and also wants to make printing free.
- Bollard lying on the side of the road. Too long have bollards been disrespected on this campus. One bollard lying on the side of the road near Meyer Green since the winter of ’98 hopes to win for bollards everywhere.
- Tourist lost on the row. A new “tourist district” was added to the Undergraduate Senate in an effort to make the body more representative of the campus population. When a random tourist stumbled into the Row housing front desk office to ask, “Do you know where the Rodin statues are?” the ASSU took the opportunity to kidnap them and put them on the ticket.
- Patrick Monreal. Just kidding, I missed the filing deadline. The Daily regrets this error.
Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.
Contact Patrick Monreal at pmonreal ‘at’ stanford.edu and Jackie O’Neil at jroneil ‘at’ stanford.edu.