SRC to not reach quorum faster than ever

In a move designed to not reach quorum faster than ever before, the Student Representative Council of Rhodes University has decided to reinstate their online voting system for the upcoming SRC elections.

According to Oric Efei, elections officer for the SRC, the SRC is hoping to not reach quorum as quickly as possible this year. Not reaching quorum is a strong Rhodes SRC tradition stemming back to 1942, when Sir Richard Von Notreachingquorumston got students to give up having reasonable representation for their woes and issues for the first time.

"In the past, it's taken us almost a month to not reach quorum," said Efei. "In fact, last year we had to restart the elections, but even then we only didn't reach quorum in three weeks. The current system is just too inefficient. If we want to amass non-votes as quickly as possible, we need to change things."

Some of the proposed changes will be new poster requirements and the old online voting system.

"With these changes, students will now be able to not vote from the comfort of their rooms or the jab labs," said Efei proudly.

The SRC will also be reintroducing their previous non-quorum-reaching strategies from previous elections, such as sending out begging emails deploring students to vote, and going into each dining hall and setting up voting booths.

"Past elections have shown that these two methods have been astounding techniques for not reaching quorum," said Efei. "We'll even be having another grazzle. That shit makes people seriously not care."

Student elections will run later this term, with students being able to pick between 5 underqualified candidates for the 9 positions.

"We've got a great line up of election candidates this year," said elections admin officer Efic Orei, whose name we didn't just make up on the spot. "There's one guy who was the Community Engagement officer at his highschool, and another girl who used to tutor maths for her grade 11 Bridging the Gap society. These are the highest qualifications we've had in years. I mean, even if they'll probably resign a month in."

The SRC is also hoping to not reach quorum as quickly as possibly by introducing a new level of truly awful into the various candidates' election posters.

"We've really stepped up the game this year," said fourth-year design student Lhuvin Taipografie. "MS Word clip-art, low-resolution images, empty catchphrases, awful leading and kerning... these are all prerequisites now."

Awful spelling is also a compulsory prerequisite

SRC President has added his voice to the debate, saying that the sudden appearance of anti-not-reaching-quorum vitriol on the SRC facebook page is unwelcome.

"Every time you vote, a kitten dies," said president Bakhe Sadi. "Just sayin'."

In light of these recent changes, those guys on the SRC facebook page student political analysts now estimate that quorum might definitely not be reached in as little as a day.

"We're really excited to see how this all turns out," said the guy who will probably end up picking our SRC for us, Saleem Badat.

Students can look forward to not complaining about the SRC ever again in a few short weeks.

SRC reopens poster design contest

In a move that has been met with widespread approval, the Student Representative Council of Rhodes University has today reopened its infamous yearly competition for poster design, also known as an "election".

“Starting today, we’re opening up the competition for entries,” said SRC Competitions Councillor Lota Ree. “We’ve already had three entrants, and the competition is heating up! May the best poster win!”

The competition, which runs every year, judges contestants off a stringent set of criteria. However, the competition completely breaks established convention in that the judges are the students themselves.

Last year saw a flurry of big contenders who really pushed the limits on good design.

"We put all the posters up around campus for a few weeks, clog up their facebook feeds with our designs, and then we have a big campus-wide election voting process where students themselves decide which poster they love best," said Ree.

The competition has, in the past, been marred by low voter numbers. 

"Sometimes we have to run the competition two or three times a year," said Ree.

According to Ree, the panel takes into consideration where the pictures are posted and how many times they are stuck up. 

"The best contenders are often stuck up in the most obnoxious, in-your-face places, with the big-league competitors being pasted up as much as five times in a row. You know, just in case you didn't read the incorrect spellings of 'accountability' and 'Councillor' and how they're the candidate who will change the whole world the first four times," she said.

...by leaving res and resigning.

According to inside information, especially powerful submissions are those that make use of REALLY LOUD AND AGGRESSIVE BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS EVERYWHERE BECAUSE IT REALLY MAKES PEOPLE PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING.

Our insider, who we made up because we can't be bothered going out on a Saturday and finding real sources to interview, also said that models in suits and short pink dresses pulling sexy or quasi-confident, pseudo-impressive power poses are a powerful tool in the competition.
"The judges also look for certain Key Words, such as 'accountability', 'honesty', 'transparency', 'change' and 'transformation'. Bad spelling and a horrific and utter disregard for grammar is a plus," he said.

Pink worked in 2012 - some students speculate that it'll be just as effective in Round Two. or Three. Or whatever.

The competition will award each of the winners with a slot in the SRC. First prize is the title of Media Councillor, with second and third being awarded Student Benefits and Residences Councillors respectively.

Due to its lack of bright colours, stupid typeface, bold lettering, Key Words, and its usage of clean photo-cropping and good layout, Sekele's poster was immediately discounted from the entries.

Unfortunately, professional designers and design students are not allowed to enter. The posters submitted are also restricted to being made with only Microsoft Paint and terrible Photoshop, with some small allowances for windows word-art and poorly cropped photos.

According to Will Bhevhoting, a first-year Bachelor of Arts student, the decision for this year’s winner is harder than ever. 

“One makes me feel like my eyes have been maced with a mixture razor blades and Autumn Harvest Crackling, and the other makes me want to vomit until I die. They really went all out this time,” he said.

Voting starts next week.

Rhodes University posters cinch award for terrible design

The International Association for Worst Design Ever has this morning awarded Rhodes University a completely uncontested award for the worst poster design... ever. In a statement released this morning, the IAWDE said that, in light of the sheer volume of entries and the calibre thereof, the posters and campaigns at RU are, in general, far, far worse than even the lowest comparable standards, such as those set by the fantastic Olympic logo.

One you've seen it, you can't unsee it. Source: Celebitchy.com

The logo in a nutshell. Source: Celebitchy.com

"We first started considering the University for this award after seeing a few of their HIV-awareness campaign pictures being put online. These tactful, tasteful, subtle and informative adverts were not at all creepy in any way and succeeded in raising awareness for HIV and safe-sex practices," said the IAWDE spokesperson Ohgohd Mai-Eyes. "We don't consider the blind or insane for these awards, but once we learnt that the brilliant minds behind these posters were sane and possessed great visual acuity, we immediately jumped to the screening selection," he said.

One of the first posters to receive a nomination.

This is actually not a satirical, bullshit thing. Seriously. WTF.

The campaigns have been met by huge praise by many Rhodes students.
"When I saw those adverts, I felt relieved," said one female student. "At first I thought that my boyfriend's professions that he wanted to be close to me were just a way to get into my pants, but now I know, thanks to Ryan and Rhodes, that he cares. Now I knew that Rhodes men know to buy the hugest, massivest box of condoms out there to show a girl true, deep love. You know, the kind that has no boundaries," she said.

However, according to Mai-Eyes, at this point of the process there were still some other candidates in the field who were neck-in-neck with Rhodes for that winning spot, including the Ryugyong building in Pyongyang, North Korea:

Voted by Esquire Magazine as "the worst building ever"

and the guy who drew this tattoo:

The resemblence is uncanny.

However, Rhodes University's contestation for the award took on new, unforeseen levels of intensity after the SRC elections started. The real problems for the selection committee started here, after they saw the new and sheer volume of posters vying for the top - or rather bottom - spot.

"After the election process started, that building started looking like the Taj Mahal, and I honestly mistook that tattoo for the Mona Lisa," said Mai-Eyes, shaking his head in wonder.
"We realised that this new level of bad was so utterly and atrociously horrible that not even MTV would fill its screens with that kind of face-palmingly horrendous, "WTF is wrong with the world" general eye-hurting visual material. When we saw that there were posters out there that made Jersey Shore look more classy and dignified than a Toastmasters Society meeting, we knew we had a tough decision on our hands."

This sudden development was spurred on even further by a failure for the election process to reach quorum.
"Before, some of the campaign posters weren't actually that bad, and at least some of the students would pretend that they gave a shit about office by randomly throwing words like 'accountability', 'transparency', 'responsibility' and 'transformation' into their posters. However, new evidence shows that less than 10% of the new posters on display have even one of those Key Words in view, and that candidates now give as much as 84% less of a shit", said IADWE research assistant Ian Notpaidenuf, whose job it was to study each and every poster in-depth for the final appraisal.

He went on to show us some of the nominated posters. "One reads like the most obscure personal advertisement ever, showing nothing but the candidate in the usual  vote-winning, voter-reassuring combination of tie-suit-jacket and a bunch of twitter and  facebook links. And one of those BBM barcode thingies. You can't forget that."

Vote for me: I can does interwebz

"Some," he said, gesturing at the pile on his desk, "just show their dedication  to winning this award in their utter disregard for any coherent structure, design flow, grammar or punctuation, whilst others just leave you completely agog," he said, before taking out a gun and blowing his brains out.

The content in competition, as you can see, has been jaw-dropping.

This, apparently, is NOT a joke.

Eventually, Mai-Eyes said, they decided not to hand out an award to one defining poster, but to just generally class them all as the overall winner.
"They all generally inspire a feeling of desolation and emptiness when you look at them, and so we decided we can't single just one out," he said. "I mean, here, we have a guy running for SRC Academic Counciller and he misspelt the office for which he was running. Another one claimed that the candidate was 'APPAOCHABLE' - in capital letters too, just in case you didn't quite understand how approachable she was."

He should run for SRC Irony Counciler (sic).
Positive attributes: advanced flame-war skills

APPRAOCHABLE! YOU HEAR ME? APPRAOCABLE!
At least she spelt "councillor" corre...
Oh wait. She didn't.

The President of the IAWDE, Verra Bleind has added her voice to the proceeding, saying that these have been the most remarkable examples of bad campaign advertising since Mike Gravel's genius video in his 2008 campaign for the 2008 American Presidency. "Seriously," she said. "Not even the part where he throws that rock could compete with these posters. I mean, these posters really do go out of their way to show you as little as possible about who the candidates really are deep inside, and why it wouldn't be a mistake to vote for them."

Some candidates didn't even change their pictures.
"They were obviously perfect the first time," said Bleine, "and these perfect originals played an integral part in getting students to vote. We figured that there must be some other, unknowable reason that people didn't vote."

Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dontkare Bout-Lomnin, has promised to ship in several hundred teams of highly-trained mental trauma psychologists and counselors to deal with the devastating leaflets.
"As soon as I saw that one with Ryan Gosling, I knew we had to react quickly. We immediately removed all our specialists from Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, Burma, Saudi Arabia and North Korea to deal with this new, iniquitous South African threat," he said.



*- what follows are a collection of other campaign posters. Browse at your peril.

Cudos on the voter Key Words and the Highlander reference.

Because fashion.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that translate to "I don't want to win"?

Because, as with many other candidates, reasons are irrelevant.

Because Suits. THAT'S WHY.

Because verbs are irrelevant.

SRC election campaign season kicks into high gear

Student Representative Council election fever has hit Rhodes University campus this morning, with many candidates beginning their long and hard campaigns of attrition awareness to try and win over the student body's precious votes.

It's a cutthroat race, with over a dozen candidates jostling to pull in the most ballots. When asked what his campaign team's tactic for winning votes this year, 3rd-year BA student Dema Gogy smiled. "I'm sticking with the usual promises that happen every year," he said. "I'm promising to do away with the DP Requirement system, to get another three buses up and down the hill, and to improve the quality of res meals," said Gogy, who is running for SRC President. When asked how he could possibly deliver these unrealistic promises, he gave a strange look.
"Are figures in power actually supposed to help the people who voted them in and do what they said they would? Sheesh. Really? I thought this was going to be like a normal South African Presidential election."

Other campaigners have been hot on their heels. "Our campaign is going full steam ahead," 2nd-year Economics student Voatfour Mea. "Today we added a thousand students to a Facebook group without their consent or desire, and then just in case they didn't get the fourteen statuses and posts we sent them, we mass-emailed the entire university three times," he said. "So in comparison to previous years' campaigns, we're being quite unintrusive."

However, even with these measures, he is still uncertain that people will be exposed to their campaign. "Just to be safe, we're putting hundreds of posters up on every wall, floor, window, tree and other conceivable poster-able surface," said Mea, who is running for the position of Environmental Rep. Mea believes that his chances of winning the position are almost as good as guaranteed. "I'm pretty popular, and I have unlimited printing credit: two key factors in this election season," he said.

According to Mea's lead campaign manager, these posters have been thought  up by think-tank teams of master design students.
"We brainstorm for hours and use our skills to come up with brilliant vote-winning tactics, such as cheesey catchphrases, terrible puns,and cliche pictures of the candidates dressed up in suits and dresses," said Isla Hertyaeyes, who, surprisingly, isn't blind or mentally handicapped.
"Then, for final good measure, we throw in some words like 'transparency', 'accountability', 'continuity' and 'communication' because it's just de riguer, who even cares what it means?"

Just one of the many jaw-droppingly brilliant campaign posters on display.

Other candidates have opted for a more realistically-focused tact to win the students' hearts.
"If you vote me in as President, I promise that we will reach quorum and we won't have to go through this twice," said 4th-year Financial Management student John Murume, not missing a chance for shameless self-promotion. "Also, I totes pinky-promise not to just, like, drop out of the SRC for no reason next year, thus making this all for nothing."

Some candidates have even gone so far as to delve into other technological formats, such as video, to bolster their chances of scoring a sport on the SRC panel. "Sure, it's nothing as creepy unsettling weird awe-inspiring as Forsythe's 2011 campaign video, but we think that it'll do the job," said Benly Bradsa, another candidate.

She's APPRAOCHABLE, a master at Photoshop, and wants to be your COUNCELOR!
(dictionary sold separately)

However, some candidates are opting for a more discreet approach than others.
"It's all about the election picture," said Mpho Togenic, another candidate running for office.
"People don't much care for the campaigns, ignore the posters, delete the Facebook messages and don't read manifestos, so I'm gonna put the most sexy, trustworthy, un-pushy photo of myself on the voting page." Her possible photos have been submitted to a stringent vetting process in various focus groups. "We've turned down some that look too serious, like we might be able to do the job, and we're in the process of deciding between a fun photo showing my university mare spirit, and a cleavage shot," she said.

Student response to the sudden spree of campaigning has been huge.
"Only 2387 students blocked us on Facebook or unsubscribed from the groups, which is a monumental success for us," said Tom Hughs, one party's Media Officer.
Even the SRC Grazzle, at which candidates outline their manifestos and visions for office, saw record numbers of attendance, with almost 38 people coming to the event. "We almost filled the first three rows in the lecture venue. We're excited that Rhodents are becoming more and more interested in student affairs outside of Friar Tucks," said Hughs.
Students themselves have come forward to praise the start of elections.
Jessica Campagnes, a Fine Arts student, could barely contain her excitement.
"I just love the way my Blackberry pings every ten seconds reminding me why I should vote for someone who I didn't even know existed until today."