Skip to main content

Elections

I write a number of posts about elections involving other people. I have run for election many times in my career and I should probably write about that a little for balance.

I have not run for political office, voted for by the electorate at large. Early on in my profession in academia I ran for seats on various committees in my university, and when on those committees I have run for chair.  I have also run for offices in professional societies.

I haven't kept an accurate record but I'd say that my winning rate is about at one out of three. I'm not an extrovert so it takes time for folk to learn what I am capable of doing. This is one of the advantages that I have seen in staying at my university as long as I have---many people know by now what I am capable of.

This has been cumulative. Once I was afforded leadership opportunities they inevitably brought greater recognition. I'd like to think that I do good work but I suspect that I am known rather for doing the work, regardless of good/bad, as many folk who are elected in academia don't put the effort into it.

The other thing that is worthy of note is my persistence. I am willing to fail in public (and that is what it is to lose an election) and try again. Many others are not. I don't know if I have a thick skin; defeats do hurt a good deal. I do know that to do the things that I want to do I need to keep trying and that is what keeps me going.

Some people derogate politicians as if they were all the same. Like all bigotries this is too simple to be true. Their motivations differ, the compromises they are willing to make to achieve their goals differ, their compassion and ambitions are all over the place. My personal experience has caused me to always maintain a little respect for someone willing to run and face loss. Many people don't have the courage.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betrayal

I caught a student cheating on a final exam this morning. I had a line of sight on them and watched for ten minutes as they took their cellphone out of their pocket, kept it below their table, typed into it, read it, put it away, then wrote on the exam, repeating this cycle over and over again.  I was a bit surprised as the exam was open notes but this student had not attended many of our classes, just stopping by for exams, and I conjecture that they had no notes to open. I confronted the student who admitted that they had done wrong in an inarticulate non-confessional way. By the afternoon they had signed off on the honor code violation report to avoid further investigation and possible sanctions beyond failing the exam.  Is anger the right emotion to feel now? I had a working relationship with the student, although they had not contributed much to it. They had deceived me in order to gain unwarranted advantage over their peers in the class and that is not right. I don't wan...
1 comment
Read more

Standing Your Corner

I'm a long-term David Simon fan ever since I read his book "Homicide", detailing a year-long embedding with Baltimore homicide detectives. It was clear-eyed about all of the strengths and weaknesses, good reflexes and prejudices of everyone that he met.  I enjoyed the television show that followed that he wrote for, and then of course "The Wire" on HBO and a number of his other shows---only limited by my access to streaming services.  There was a histrionic moment in a later season of "Homicide" where he just let a character vent; a homicide detective who was part-owner of a bar frequented by cops watched a particularly violent drug criminal, responsible for many unsolved homicides, come into his bar with his associates, violating the detective's territory. The detective came around the bar holding a billy club in his hand and loudly discussed his first year as a patrol officer walking a beat. His supervising officer told him that he had a corner a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Momentum

In my youth my primary social justice commitment was through Amnesty International. As an affluent white male I enjoyed freedoms that I thought ideally everyone should share; in the 1980's we had had the vine of United States support for repressive regimes that were nominally anti-Communist bearing cruel fruit and I in my small part of the world wanted to do something about that.  It was a more active support Amnesty International sought back then; nowadays they just ask me for money. We members were encouraged to write to foreign government officials to urge them to take care of political prisoners that we named, the idea being that as long as they knew that they were seen the cruelty would diminish. One letter per prisoner, because they were all human beings, not just a faceless group. I have no independent way of verifying if the hundreds of letters I wrote eased any suffering; I know that they changed me. Selfishly I am grateful. At the time I made a point of reading journalism...
Post a Comment
Read more