March 1,1977
Election Reflection
BY RICHARD PHILLIPS
When I decided to run for
Executive Council of the Com
munity Senate, I was certainly
hopeful that politics on a
campus the size of Guilford
could be kept in a realm that
was sensible and decent. Last
year's elections were charac
terized by an unnecessary
amount of distasteful charges
and counter-charges. That is
why when I first approached
my potential running mates,
John Richardson and Bob
Wells, I made it clear that
I wanted no involvement in the
kind of campaign we typically
see with platforms and
promises of accomplishments
to come. But, really, Guilford
is not Washington, D.C., and
I have no political favors to
trade with anyone to help
accomplish what I will. That
is why I did not see it necessary
to publicize a platform per se.
I am not even sure that Bob,
John, and I agree on many of
the issues. We did not talk
about them enough to really
find out. But we did spend
our time talking about what
could be done to achieve
greater involvement in the
Community Senate. I think it
is only obvious that this is the
chief failing of any student
government or perhaps any
democratic form of govern
ment. I would even hope that
the fact that my runningmates
and I do not even agree
necessarily on many of the
issues would be an attraction
for our ticket if it had been
known.
But it did not seem to me
that this year's senate elections
were kept out of the rut into
which they fell last year. The
February 22 issue of the
Guilfordian contained five
letters to the editor that
specifically dealt with the
elections. I found two of
these to be decent and the
other three to be indecent;
two of these to be fair and
the other three to be unfair;
two of these to be reasonable
and the other three to be
unreasonable. I would like to
deal with each of the letters.
The letter from Sara Beth
Terrell was written with
good judgement. She said
what she felt needed to be
said, but she did it without
propogandizing her position
by siding with one or the other
tickets. The letter from Eric
Jackson accomplished nearly
the same thing. He said what
he felt he needed or wanted
to say. Part of what he wanted
to say of course was that he
hoped those reading the
letter would support the ticket
of which he was a member.
This is only obvious. But
what is important to me is
that he said it in a way that
does not try to bring discredit
to the rest of the tickets.
These two letters are the kind
of campaigning that I had
hoped to find in the Senate
elections. The other three
letters in this particular issue
of the Guilfordian were the
kinds of literature that I would
hope to not have to come up
against.
The letter co-signed by
Mark Sieber, Jenny Wiebler,
and Frances Henderson struck
me as- being no more than a
piece of propaganda trash and
I think it is insulting to me
and to the community in which
we live. Their first point
mentions that "of the four
candidates, only one is cur
rently a member of the com
munity senate." This is true,
but the President constitutes
only one-third of the Executive
Council. The president is
just not that all-important a
figure that anyone should vote
for a ticket solely on the
basis of that ticket's president
ial candidate. I'm proud to
"regularly appear on Guilford's
roster of complainers." I
suppose that this charge is re
ferring to my involvement with
the Community Council about
the matter of dormitory life.
I have never uttered a word
to the Administrative
Council about any matter. The
Community Council is a place
to air concerns, and anyone
as well as I could air their
concern if they wanted to. The
Community Council has
absolutely no decision-making
power, they are only there as
a place to express a concern
of the Guilford College
Community. Of course people
are going to see in a
situation that which they want
to, and I am as guilty of this
as anyone, but what people
fail to realize is that I did
something about a situation
that I saw as dissatisfactory to
a substantial number of
students. And it is ludicrous
to think that that matter went
as far as it did, in terms of
time and energy spent, just
because Richard Phillips was
"complaining." There were a
good number of students
involved in that effort (more
about that later) and the fact
is that the Administration
was aware for a good number
of years that there was a
severe problem about the
attitudes of many of the
resident students towards the
community as a whole. They
told me that they had
The Guilfordian
simply been waiting for a
number of years for enough
students to become concerned
with the situation because that
is what it was going to take
to make improvements. The
nature of the problem was not
something that the Adminis
tration could do something
about. And obviously, the
time is not ripe, that is to
say, enough students really do
not care enough because that
effort has obviously fizzled
out.
Granted this letter from
Sieber, Wiebler, and
Henderson was only talking
about presidential candidates,
but let's extrapolate their
concern about experience to
the other members of the
tickets. The other two
members of the ticket these
authors were supporing have,
I would venture to say,
absolutely no experience in
working with the Senate.
Therefore, I think that this
point in the letter is either
presidentially-elite or
hypocritical. And I think it is
unfair to charge that I am only
concerned with the Senate
now after bypassing them all
year. As co-editor of the
Guilfordian, I thought it
imperative that at least the
Senates be published on page
one whenever possible. This
is not to mention the fact
that I attended a handful of
Senate meetings and went so
far as to suggest in one that
whenever possible Senators
should alert the communica
tions committee, or whoever
was responsible for those
duties, of any work that they
might be doing so that this
could be reported to the news
paper and in effect, the
agenda published for the
upcoming Senate meeting.
The hope was that this would
encourage other members of
the community to attend at
least one meeting, that is one
in which there was something
of specific interest to them
being discussed.
Their second point about
the Williams ticket being the
only one that is not solidly
male ticket is nothing more
than sexist in itself. I think
one of the practical goals of
the women's movement (or
whatever you might want to
call it) is that we be able to
get to the point where we
need not even consider the
sex of an individual. It was
more than once suggested to
me that before the ticket to
which I belonged was organized
that I certainly ought to have
a woman on the ticket if I
wanted to have any chance of
An Editorial
winning. I dismissed this
suggestion without any
second thoughts. I resent the
sexist implications of their
second point.
And the third point of this
ill-conceived letter is thoroughly
disgusting. They write of my
ticket: "The thrid is not
campaigning as such, but is
conducting fireside chats.
Unfortunately, they seem to
have little spark and too much
dead wood." Group discus
sions are in my opinion a much
better way to exchange ideas
and find out what the senti
ment of the community is. If
you want to have individual
conversations, why bother,
simply take a poll. But, if you
want to try and have a mutual
exchange of ideas and at least
make the first attempt at arriv
ing at some kind of concensus
decision, then group
discussions are the best
method in my opinion. Bob
and John and I are not the
dead wood: we were there
for the discussions; it is all
the people who failed to show,
and failed with no good reason
to show, that indeed are the
dead wood. We tried in what
we saw as the most effective
means to involve the students.
Granted, it did not work as
well as we would have
liked. I apologize for not being
gut-level and being pretentious
as Sieber, Wiebler, and
Henderson have charged.
The second letter that I
have disagreement with is the
cute one from A. Launched
Quaker. As best I can figure
out, I am the "seemingly
debonaire, miscast
Demosthenes (who is in gear
only for the elections)."
Again, this letter is infused
with an elitist attitude toward
the President of the Commun
ity Senate that is alarming to
say the least. And of course
it is only obvious that it gets
nasty throwing about accus
ations that are insulting and
degrading. Why is this
necessary? I don't feel like this
is an unreasonable concern
that I have that I not be
slandered in the campus
newspaper. I do not appreciate
being the victim of a piece of
propaganda. That is not what
the newspaper is for. I think
it should be for the publication
of responsible and ethical
pieces, not the kind of adver
tisement for one candidate
that this letter most obviously
is.
And lastly, the letter from
Peter Reichard. The first
portion devoted to the dis
crediting of the Eliott Good
Party are nothing but slander-
ous and irresponsible. There
is no place for commentary
like that anywhere. In dealing
with me personally and the
Alternative Party, Peter
charges that we "offer an
alternative to student govern
ment." This is hardly true
at all. What we hoped to offer
was an alternative method of
student government. Our
platform is just not that
important. The will of the
Executive Council should not
be the work of the Community
Senate. Therefore, a plat
form is unnecessary and in my
opinion, even inappropriate.
One point that I would
like to make, which I mentioned
parenthetically earlier, is
noteworthy. I first approached
the Community Council at the
invitation of Bruce Stewart to
express what I saw the problem
to be from the point of a
student living in the dorm and
an intern in the dorm. They
invited me to gather a group of
students to bring before them
in a specially-called meeting
the next week to propose
some solutions for the the
problem. Peter Reichard was
one of those students, and his
development of the party
room proposal is the realiz
ation of his efforts and the
support of the community
council at that time. We were
both appointed to the ad hoc
committee that was to meet
and consider further the
problem and the proposed
solutions.
My point is this: if my
approaching the Community
Council was so inappropriate,
why was Peter Reichard so
willing to participate fully
in the handling of the matter
by the Community Council
and how is one to explain
his own lack of initiative in
organizing the matter as a
concern of the Community
Senate when he was so
obviously interested and
enthusiastic in solving the
problem? That is for Peter
to answer. For myself, I
would simply say that the
Community Council was not
an inappropriate place to take
the matter and to take the
matter to the Community
Senate would have been also
very helpful. I am only sorry
that it was not done.
I hope in the future that
people will be more careful
about what they write. There
is not anything to gain that is
worth the gaining by slandering
someone in as irresponsible
a manner as I view these
letters to be. Running for
office was a lot of fun!!
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