Beyond the debates, chalking and colorful t-shirts, the Facebook page and website of Generic Candidate, and the campaign to "abstain" from voting, have affected the mood of this year's campaign for Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate President.
Although the Generic Candidate was, for most of its existence, run by an anonymous user, junior Ben Kurland revealed yesterday that he was behind the page's creation.
"I, Ben Kurland, created Generic Candidate," he said. "It's worth saying that I'm not generic candidate and my political views at Tufts are not the same as the political views espoused therein, but I did create the page and did create the character and publicize it. I got various Facebook messages from people with ideas, but it was just me that created it."
Kurland explained that he tends to vote in every TCU election, and upon seeing the release of both candidates websites, he was surprised by their similarity.
"It was frustrating that you have these two candidates, who I'm sure are both well-intentioned guys and care about the school and want to do right by the school and it seemed just on reading the websites - and I've learned more about them since - that there just wasn't that much meaningful differentiation between their platforms," Kurland said. "I created the website initially just kind of as a way to comment on that and to raise a discussion about that and to raise a discussion about what it means to be at a school where your two choices are so similar."
Kurland explained that "Generic Candidate" was not in favor of either candidate and was not representative of his own views in the election.
"When I created the page I very much so didn't know which candidate to support," he explained. "I spent the week researching them and formed my own opinions over the week, but I tried not to let those get into the Generic Candidate character."
Members of both campaigns, however, did not see the candidacy of Generic Candidate in the same light and were upset by his involvement in the electoral process.
Hannah Deegan, the campaign manager for Andrew Nunez, explained that while their campaign initially ignored the humor from Generic Candidate, he quickly lost his comedic quality.
"I feel that Generic Candidate was at first running as a parody," Deegan, a junior, said. "Some of the things that generic candidate brought up were strong stances that Andrew N???±ez had taken about being a minority student ... it started out as a parody and then it ended as an attack."
Deegan was particularly concerned that the recent tweets and Facebook posts from Generic Candidate would have a harmful impact on N???±ez's campaign and condemned Kurland's actions. Robert Joseph, the other candidate for TCU President, also expressed dismay at Generic Candidate's presence in the campaign.
"I'm really disappointed in a lot of the things Generic Candidate did because I don't support personal attacks and I am really upset about that," Joseph said.
Deegan explained that the N???±ez and Joseph campaigns coordinated their responses to Generic Candidate and trusted that the other were not behind the candidacy.
"Myself, [Joesph's campaign manager] Ben Kaplan, Robert Joseph and Andrew all sat down about two days ago and committed to running a clean and positive campaign," Deegan explained. "Generic Candidate really changed that. I think both campaigns, we were really committed to upholding that. Then this outside force came in and sort of changed that."
Kurland, however, explained that he was simply trying to improve discussion about the candidate's respective platforms and did not intend to harm either one.
"The idea was to raise issues that other people weren't raising and to create controversies that other people weren't discussing and to kind of showcase the problems inherent to the campaign," Kurland said. "[It was] also to get people involved and to get people asking questions and to get people wondering what the differences were so they could find out what the meaningful differentiation was, so they could vote for the right candidate, the better candidate and not just who their Facebook friends liked the most."
TCU Parliamentarian Brian Tesser said that, although Generic Candidate was funny at the onset, it became too much.
"If somebody wanted to bring forward the things that Generic Candidate brought forward, that's their prerogative, but just in my personal opinion, I think that it could have kind of swayed votes in a way that they shouldn't have been swayed," Tesser, a sophomore, said. "It was coming from something that, in my opinion, wasn't credible because no one was tying themselves to it."
Kurland apologized to people who felt they were targeted by his faux-campaign.
"I feel bad for anyone that was offended by it," he said. "I do want to apologize to anybody on [Elections Commission] or on either of the campaigns if this presented difficulties or distress. That wasn't the goal, but I am very glad and proud of the discourse that's come out of it so I am glad it got the reception that it did."
Kurland's creation of Generic Candidate, however, was hardly the only external factor, as senior Evan Moulson created posters suggesting that students "abstain" from voting. Moulson explained that the posters were an attempt at humor while bringing serious issues to the table.
"It was a joke to bring attention to the failures of the process and I think that's probably best exemplified by the poster that says 'nobody really wants to vote for either of them,' or the one that says 'it's a popularity contest,' because that's really what it is," Moulson said. "It's not about the issues, it's not about the change they're going to bring about. We need to examine the way we do things at Tufts, and that was what the posters were meant to bring about."
Moulson explained that he wanted to bring attention to the issue of who could run for TCU Senate President. He explained that you have to be an elected member of senate to run.
"Candidates must be senators and then they must be confirmed by two-thirds of the vote of the Senate to even run," he said. "If any significant chunk of Senate doesn't agree with you, then you have no chance of even being nominated and you can't run, you can't change things and so the system stays the same, business as usual."
Tesser and Dan Johnson, the chair of the Elections Commission verified that the TCU Constitution only permits current senators to run. Tesser, however, provided an explanation of how someone who has no experience on Senate could, in fact, mount a campaign.
"The way the presidential campaign works is we have an election just before that where they get class seats and you have to have already ran for and won that class seat in order to run for president," Tesser explained. "So even if someone has never been on senate, they can run for Senate hypothetically in that two week period before the election and then run so technically anyone can, it's not like you have had to have been on senate at all before that point ... That election, the one right before the presidential [election], tends to be unopposed so it's not like they have to run a campaign even, because it's for a senior seat and they have that opportunity to get on pretty easily."
Moulson said his campaign was not meant to discourage voting, but instead to poke fun at the process and to make people think critically about their decisions.
"I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the abstain posters that I made, which started off as a joke and remain a joke as I don't want people to not vote," he said. "That's exactly the opposite of what I want. I want everyone to vote, but I want them to have those votes mean something and this year especially we saw two candidates who, while they are very well meaning, their platforms form the Tufts canon of accepted beliefs."
