Collegian endorses Landsberg/Barbe for USG

A slide of chocolate, vanilla, tapioca and butterscotch pudding on the HUB lawn. Blue body paint. A crusade to get two-ply toilet paper in the dorms. Giving Easter eggs to Graham Spanier to protest borough housing.

You have Michael Landsberg and Brent Barbe to thank.

Let's face it: Undergraduate Student Government elections tend to fall on the border of dull and aloof. Most candidates (or at least the ones who always win) concentrate on impressing other student leaders and obtaining their endorsements. Insiders elect insiders, while outsiders (read: regular students) watch with little power and even less interest (read: total and utter boredom).

You've probably seen the other candidates' posters by now. They promise things like controlling textbook prices, lowering the costs of HUB food items, guaranteeing on-time graduation and improving student parking.

But what they're really promising is that they'll be happy to accept the paid in-state tuition, the cushy office, the prestige, the invitation to join a secret society like Parmi Nous or Skull and Bones, and a recommendation from University administrators after they kiss enough butt.

Trust us on this one: Michael Landsberg and Brent Barbe are better people than this.

This game that's played every year is called the HUB Club Game. And chances are that you're not invited to play. In fact, chances are the candidates don't even care if you watch them play.

At least, until now.

Michael Landsberg and Brent Barbe have shown that people like you can play this game, too.

No matter whether you vote or not, someone is going to be elected USG president this Wednesday and be awarded a free year's worth of tuition. Would you rather it be somebody who has spent the past two years building up their governing "credentials" while becoming completely out of touch with genuine student concerns and locking themselves away on the second floor of the HUB?

Or would you rather have a ticket that is so entrenched in common studenthood that it knows the issues of the ground floor of the HUB -- where there are not enough "rider" slips on the Ride Board, causing students to think they have "found a ride only to realize the word 'driver' has been crossed out with the word 'rider' written next to it?"

If you choose option No. 1, then you're probably out of touch with average Penn State students. That's your fault.

If you say the second, then you've begun to understand what Landsberg and Barbe are all about. It's not about unrealistic platform goals (which almost every set of candidates has) -- it's about genuine people with real personalities who would like to do nothing more than make your next year interesting.

Level with us for a second: Obviously, Ride Board slips, two-ply toilet paper on campus and combating low computer lab temperatures are not the flashiest, most radical student issues. But at least they're not as loaded as other tickets' promises of abolishing the activity fee, defending the activity fee or lowering student costs. Think about it -- if USG could really accomplish these things, don't you think it would have done so already?

In reality, student government has very little power. Its members don't "govern" anything.

But what a student government president and vice president can do is set a tone, letting administrators know what students really think. When Graham Spanier and the University Board of Trustees want to know what students think, they don't ask all 40,000 of us. Instead, they go to the student government president -- and what the president says, they tend to believe.

Landsberg and Barbe comprise the only ticket that will really represent your views properly when the time comes. The typical USG president and vice president would, as they mostly have for the past several years, go around to a bunch of student organization presidents and listen to them. Landsberg and Barbe, meanwhile, would go to parties and ask you what your opinion is.

Yes, Landsberg and Barbe are silly -- but so is the whole student government election process. Frankly, anyone who takes USG elections too seriously probably has a warped sense of reality.

Yet, when you talk with them, it's clear that they are intelligent, responsible and caring. They have shown that they are smart enough and aware enough to work on the larger issues, but the only promises they make are tangible results they know they can deliver. They promise to work on the tougher issues, but they won't make promises to deliver them.

In other words, they're sincere and down-to-earth. Oh yeah, Landsberg and Barbe are inventive, too. (Landsberg won third place in an on-campus "Gong Show" contest in which he played ring toss with bagels while he wore a plunger on his head.)

That sincerity, awareness and creativity probably means they don't have a chance of winning -- unless you and all your friends actually vote for them on Wednesday.

The sad truth is, Landsberg and Barbe's sincerity is probably going to work against them in the election on Wednesday.

There are three tickets whose USG experience and connections are going to win them a high level of support from USG insiders, secret "honor" societies and other agenda-ridden student organizations. Some, like vice presidential candidate Kendra Ciesla, have shown they can play hardball with the University president on borough housing. But if any of these insiders could see out, don't you think they would have seen you by now?

There is one ticket, Darin Loccarini's, that has won itself a good degree of notoriety this semester and will get support based on name-recognition alone.

Many people will probably vote for Loccarini because he has shown he can make a name for himself. So if you want a president with plenty of self-importance and a strong anti-homosexuality background, Loccarini is your man. (On the other hand, if you want people who have also made names for themselves but instead wear Pride Week pins and humility on their sleeves, then vote for Landsberg and Barbe.)

And then there's an assortment of platforms that have bright spots but stand out more for their words than their actions or feasibility. Some, like the David Lubkemann and Wesley Bowser tickets, have a lot of sincerity that is encouraging in what has become a very discouraging process. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have that intangible "special something" to make them effective leaders. Some other candidates just seem angry. And some others are just dull.

Truth be told, in any political system, all these types of campaigns have much better chances of winning than the true innovators -- who don't have time to make promises as transparent as one-ply toilet paper because they're too busy delivering on realistic ones (they promised a pudding slide, they presented a pudding slide).

That's where you come in.

You, the University student who never votes in USG elections because you don't see how it can affect your life.

You, the disillusioned constituent who feels the current activities of USG don't serve your interests in any way.

You, the student who has been here several years already and has never heard of Lion's Paw, Skull and Bones or Parmi Nous -- or maybe even USG, for that matter -- because they really don't get in touch with anything you want, or if they do, they never deliver on it.

You, the Penn Stater who knows you've been annoyed at one point or another on account of the Ride Board. And you know you've had bad experiences with campus toilet paper.

You don't have to listen to us, of course. But this is your moment to go down in history as someone who cast a ballot that changed student government at Penn State for the better.

It'll be easy. Look in the Collegian for directions about where to vote Wednesday. When you vote, Landsberg and Barbe are first on the ballot, so their names will be easy to find.

In many ways, USG is a monarchy. Each year, they nominate and endorse their own inside ticket, and each year that ticket wins. What enables this structure to persist is the fact that most of the people who usually vote are USGers themselves and their usual supporters.

It doesn't have to work that way, and it shouldn't work that way. Make a difference. Effect change. Make your government work for you. Don't let them continue to vote themselves into office. Vote yourself into office by voting for people who truly represent the creative, diverse, educational and fun elements of college life.

What more could you ask for in a student leader? Except, of course, a slide of Jell-O, too.

And if all else fails, remember this poem:

If the words "Parmi Nous"

Make you ask "Parmi Who?"

Then Landsberg and Barbe

Are probably for you.