The Cluster endorses Davis/Lovett ticket for SGA president
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For the first time, The Cluster staff has chosen to endorse one of the two tickets running for Student Government Association president and vice-president.
After listening intently to the debate and conducting interviews with both presidential hopeful Mollie Davis and her running mate Joshua Lovett, and presidential hopeful Dalton Turner and his vice-presidential running mate Justin Robinson; The Cluster editorial review board has decided to endorse Senators Davis and Lovett for SGA election.
This was a hard decision as both campaigns have demonstrated the necessary drive and passion that are vital to holding the title of SGA president and vice-president. However, in the end, the review board felt as though only one ticket has shown that they have done and if elected will continue to do, the research and work in order to best serve Mercer’s student body.
While both tickets had very strong platforms, it was made clear that only Davis and Lovett were able to back their initiatives up with numbers and research instead of excitement.
Davis and Lovett’s jobs programs for students will be of great benefit to current and future Mercer students and their third-party funded athletics incentives program will boost long-term student attendance at sporting events and will give this school a stronger sense of school spirit.
Davis and Lovett are making the contacts and doing the legwork for their initiatives before the fact, and this sense of certainty and drive resonates throughout their platform making them the stronger candidates to hold this office.
During our interviews with both tickets, the vice-presidential candidates were asked if they would vote against the president if the president’s ideas went against either their better judgment or morals. Only Lovett said that he would.
This showed the board both Lovett’s passion and his commitment to the betterment of the student body instead of a commitment to primarily serving his president.
While the positions have many responsibilities, both Davis and Lovett are involved just enough on campus to represent the diverse student body but not enough to disallow them the time to fully dedicate themselves to the executive positions and their necessary duties.
Davis and Lovett have shown that they are capable of holding these offices and it is the belief of the editorial board that they are better prepared to keep unity but not lose the variety of opinions that the Senate and Executive Council may have.
We wish both tickets luck in the upcoming election, but we believe that Davis and Lovett are ready to build the future of Mercer and SGA.
How did the Cluster make this decision? Who conducted the interviews?
The Editor-in-Chief, The Opinion’s Editor, and two opinions writers. The decision was decided based upon arguments given both orally and in written form by the committee members and ultimately decided upon by the Opinions editor. Each committee member gave an argument in support of who they thought the paper should endorse and then the Opinions Editor utilized those arguments to build her own. Interviews were conducted with both campaigns. This methodology is based loosely off of the model most newspapers used including the Macon Telegraph.
This is so unprofessional. Cluster, get your stuff together..this is what happens when few individuals have too much power.
How is this unprofessional? Every major newspaper endorses candidates, and they followed all of the proper steps.
“Davis and Lovett were able to back their initiatives up with numbers and research instead of excitement”
Are you talking about the facebook survey conducted 12 hours before the debate or the survey conducted in 2009 that is even less valid that davis/lovett referred to
Granted this is already old news because they won, but I feel like a paper shouldn’t endorse one candidacy over another. If individual writers want to plug a candidate in their articles, that makes sense. But when the higher-ups speak on behalf of the Cluster as a whole, they are effectively ignoring some of their hired writers that might support a different candidacy or exhibit ambivalence or apathy about the student government elections. If 100% of the Cluster staff endorsed the Davis/Lovett ticket, it would make sense to say that the Cluster, as a unit, endorses that ticket; but when only four people made that decision, the title of this article should read “Cluster Editors and Opinions Columnists Endorse Davis/Lovett”.
And just because “professional” papers do something doesn’t make it right. If we follow that logic, the Cluster should engage in the propagandist techniques of “professional” papers. Also, if the Cluster were to follow the example of “professional” papers, it would turn down certain guest opinion pieces not because of offensive content but because of poor writing. I’m not meaning to knock the Cluster, but I wish certain guest writers would learn to write better.
This is all just my opinion. Feel free to disregard it.
Why would you bash your own paper, Ross?
Like I said, I’m not meaning to knock the Cluster, but I wish certain guest writers would learn to write better. Maybe even a new level of scrutiny should be introduced beyond just making sure the articles submitted aren’t hate speech or written anonymously; maybe a higher standard of writing should be required. And I don’t mean to assume that the articles that I wrote for the Cluster were god-tier; I’ll leave that to the opinions of the readers and editors. I just think that a lot of articles published, with the notable exception of Sean Kennedy’s articles, tend to be of less-than-collegiate quality. (I’m mostly concerned with the opinions section here).
Let me reiterate: I am not bashing the Cluster. Comparatively speaking, it is probably the best student newspaper in the state. However, a lot of articles in the opinions section (mostly those by guest writers) leave much to be desired with regards to quality; I could cite one from last semester that was so damn incoherent that I still don’t know what the author was trying to say, but I’ll be nice and spare him/her the embarrassment.
tl;dr Cluster == good; guest writers: get better or GTFO
Propagandist techniques of major papers? Conspiracy theorists abound!
Damn Noam Chomsky and his influence on me!