Imagine attending
organization’s meetings, talking with group leaders, giving interviews to the
press, debating other tickets, and painting banners all on less
than five hours of sleep while also dealing with the stresses of a regular
student’s life.
Although one might mistake these for the activities that the
Romney and Obama campaigns engage in, this was the reality of members of the
University of Georgia Student Government Association’s recent YOUnited campaign.
Kevin
“Femi” Brinson, campus liaison, and Jenny Grifenhagen, treasurer, were both interviewed
Sunday night at the Tate Center to discuss not only their activities as a part
of YOUnited, but also to shed light on the strategy and politics that were
involved with running their campaign.
Both made clear that it was the message of YOUnited’s
presidential candidate, Sean Malone, about connecting with students on a
personal level and coalescing the campus, that drew each of them to want to become
involved.
Brinson,
a sophomore finance and management double major, was actually approached by
some of the other tickets to help out, but he identified better with Malone’s
message “of giving back to the people.”
The
YOUnited campaign strategy was unorthodox because it specifically targeted multicultural organizations that in most SGA elections, fail to receive
significant attention from the major tickets, Brinson said.
“When
we found out only 4 percent of campus voted last year, I made the bold
statement of saying let’s go after the other 96 percent,” Grifenhagen, the
junior advertising major, explained.
Even
though two members of the three-member ticket are a part of Greek
organizations, the campaign went against the conventional strategy of targeting
the important Greek vote with the hopes that it would be split amongst the four
tickets, giving no one ticket a clear advantage, Grifenhagen said.
Instead,
YOUnited concentrated on personal connections with organizations like the NAACP
to get informal endorsements, which Brinson acknowledged, “It was kind of
difficult, but what we tried to do was have people involved in different
organizations reach out to their lower divisions on a personal level.”
Although
the campaign hoped to bring a fresh new attitude to SGA, it
was the media, like the Red & Black newspaper, that gave them the title of
the “outsider” ticket, due to their lack of SGA members on the ticket, the pair both said.
“We
did want to be an external ticket, but at the same time, we wanted to show that
we do know what we’re doing if we are getting into SGA. So that was a part of
getting our public message out and making sure people knew that we had
experience, but that they knew that we were different,” Brinson explained.
“Our
strategy was SGA is a good vehicle, but needs new drivers. We don’t want to
change the vehicle; we just want to change the culture within it,” the finance and management double major elaborated.
Although
the pair said YOUnited kept a positive, upbeat message about unifying the
campus, they were “shocked” with some of the negative attacks from other rival
tickets, which they felt mirrored politicians on the national level.
“I didn’t realize how negative it would be because some of the comments
were towards YOUnited members they had worked with before,” Brinson admitted. “I was kinda disappointed and kinda shocked, but I guess that is the
nature of the beast when it gets so competitive and people are so fired up
about a cause.”
Although
Grifenhagen said these negative attacks were effective and might even be a
necessary part of a winning strategy, she wouldn’t have changed YOUnited’s
decision to not engage in the negative antics.
"I think 100 percent of the time I would rather stick to my morals
and go about it that way and make real relationships with people and not win,
then go the “effective” dirty politics route.”
