As candidates for student body president enter the second week of campaigning, sandwich-board signs are littered about campus, though vandalism and staggered campaigning starts have limited the amount of visible signs.
So far, Jim Ceresnak, a junior in political science, and Anup Engineer, a senior in business administration, said they both have about 80 signs arranged around campus and Kornelius Bascombe, a sophopmore in criminology, said he has about 30 signs up.
Already there has been controversy concerning candidate supporters damaging the campaign materials of opponents.
Bascombe said Ceresnak’s supporters are tearing down his campaign signs. “Jim is a good, honest guy,” Baracomb said, but he said Ceresnak’s supporters are being disrespectful.
“It is dirty politics,” Bascombe said, adding that he has to spend more money to replace the broken signs.
Bascombe said he talked with Andrew Tucker, the chairman of the Elections Commission, about the vandalism, but Tucker said that without names, there was nothing he could do.
Candidate Amber Joyner, a senior in political science, said all the candidates need to realize signs get broken.
“You plan for that to happen,” she said.
Engineer echoed Joyner’s sentiments.
“Those things are fair game,” he said.
Engineer said he understands that to some on campus, signs make good skateboard jumps but denied not caring about the welfare of his signs.
“I’m a realist,” he said. “Ideally, I would place my signs wherever I wish.”
Adam Cloninger, a junior in international studies, said he would be angry if his signs were damaged but lamented that damaged signs are just the a part of the campaigning process.
“Skateboards tear stuff up and there’s nothing to do about it,” Cloninger said.
Another reason for the lack of signs around campus has been varying ideas on how to campaign. Ceresnak said signs were his “number one priority.”
Likewise, Cloninger said his signs will be “popping up” all over campus this week.
Joyner, however, is running her campaign with a focus on word of mouth rather than visible advertisements.
Both views are different from Engineer’s.
“There’s a lot of people on campus, even if we had 500 signs, there would still be people who didn’t know who we are,” Engineer said.
Ceresnak hinted there might be more signs outside today, whereas Engineer said he was done placing signs unless it was necessary for him to put up more. Cloninger and Joyner said they were planning on having their signs up today as well.
“I didn’t want to be in the first wave,” Cloninger said, adding that he felt people get sick of seeing the same signs throughout the campaign.