My Ideal PSG Ticket

Like many fellow students at Purdue, I feel it is important to stay informed and active involving the Purdue Student Government. In the past several elections, however, I have not felt that there was a ticket or specific candidate that represented my true views and interests. I have not yet seen a ticket that truly championed the values of limited government, economic responsibility, and of course, pragmatism. I’m graduating within a month, so I cannot run myself, but I would like to lay out a few ideas for my “perfect PSG ticket” in the next election.

First of all, I don’t like the non-partisan feel of PSG in general. While not everyone needs to have a party, I believe that the presidential and vice-presidential positions should slap a party name on their ticket to make it easier for the students to be corralled into voting. For my ideal ticket, the name would be “The Regressive Minimalist Party”. While shocking at first, the name really conveys the platform of the party.  

There will be 2 defining issues that form the basis of my ideal ticket.  #1 – Undoing all the expensive, pointless, “progressive” crap that PSG platforms have done in the past, and once that is done… #2 – Dissolve PSG as it is currently constituted, eliminate the entire PSG budget, and replace it with a body of self-funded, self-inflated “representatives” with little to no real power.

PSG always claims to be “for the students,” but I’m guessing that around 90% of students probably cannot list a single positive thing that PSG has ever done for them. I can, however, list many inconveniences that PSG has brought upon me, most noticeably the enviro-bullying of ITaP into implementing pointless and costly “green” policies. Aside from the changes I have actually felt, I know that my tuition money is constantly being wasted away by these clowns as they try to feel important and do all sorts of neat things for the students. This crap needs to stop immediately. The only money that is to be spent will be anything necessary to undo all the “green changes,” excepting those changes that have actually saved money.

After all the problems that can be undone are undone, the best part of my ideal ticket’s platform will occur. PSG will be completely dissolved, with the entire budget being cut, every member released, and every pointless PSG activity put to an end. This will require quite a bit of restraint on the part of the PSG president, and it might not even be possible under the current pretend PSG laws, but it does need to be done.  

“But what about student representation?”  you might ask. Well we should definitely have something. Where else would all the ambitious populists be able to give pointless speeches and dress up in suits? To take into consideration these special individuals, a new body of student representatives, similar to the current Senate, will be created, with 1 member for each school. Rather than the lofty name of “Senator,” these representatives will all have the title of “Pawn.” They will have a budget of $0 yearly, so they will even have to raise money or spend their own if they want to have a meet-‘n’-greet pizza party at the start of their pretend session. The duties of this group of Pawns will be pretty much nothing, but it will give them all  something very nice with which to pad their resumes.  

As for true student representation, it will be brought about by market forces. The real power for this lies within the state government, not PSG, so action will have to be taken there to force true transparency upon Purdue and how it spends its money. Once there is true transparency, the market will take its effect and the students’ voices (through their money) will be heard more clearly than any phony PSG ticket has ever pretended to be.  

I know this ticket will not happen. I know that people love the excitement of the PSG elections, as well as the tradition. It is difficult to make such a major change, even if makes sense. But I’m hoping that someday, a group of enlightened students will finally realize that student government is just a way for future politicians to learn how to break promises and spend money that isn’t theirs.