From the moment it started, True Blue has sought to be a student coalition dedicated to “making student government matter” on the U of O campus. However, that doesn’t just mean changing the ASUO once we’re elected – it means changing the very way people run for office.
We know what ASUO election season means for most people. Each year, groups of students start forming to defend one side or another in the debate over services on campus and the student fees that pay them. Often, those groups try to raise as much money as possible (much of it from off-campus sources) to pay for all kinds of expensive advertisements, shirts, food, and buttons to hand out to students or show off around campus. They tailor their message to a couple of key constituent groups, lots of different campaign material is handed out, some grievances are filed, and eventually a handful of students are elected to positions within the ASUO by the small percentage of people who decide to vote.
We believe that campaigns can, and should, do better than that. Rather than trying to spend as much money as possible or concentrating on what campaign paraphernalia we can hand out, the folks that make up True Blue decided to try to campaign another way: By working as hard as possible, by drawing on the enthusiasm and energy of students, and by finding new and innovative ways to communicate our platform to students while finding out what THEY want to see from the ASUO.
We decided that the first big change would be to strictly follow a self-imposed spending cap of $2009 for all of True Blue’s campaign activities for all 21 candidates in our coalition. In other words, we’re spending less than $100 per candidate to get our message out to voters. ASUO Elections should be about who has the best plan, and who can best communicate those ideas to students – not about who can round up the most cash and outspend their opponents on campaign materials or promotions.
The next big change was to develop a Web site that would be a better resource for students who wanted to learn more about True Blue and our platform. Our campaign’s Web site was developed 100% in-house by members of the coalition who volunteered countless hours doing Web design, refining site features, and generating all of the content that you see on our page. VoteTrueBlue.org was a labor of love for a dedicated group of volunteers and candidates who wanted to make a site that was accessible and user-friendly. If we were going to campaign on the idea that the ASUO needs to create better resources to reach out to students, we knew that we needed to demonstrate our commitment to that idea in our own work.
In that spirit, we also developed a social networking plan that would allow us to harness all of the energy brought to the coalition by our candidates, volunteers and supporters. Most students now use tools like Twitter and Facebook to stay connected with their friends in their daily lives – why not allow them the opportunity to connect to the student leaders who could potentially manage more than $11 million of their money next year? Again,all of True Blue’s social networking tools, from the campaign Twitter feed to our Facebook application are developed and operated by the same candidates and supporters who are running to make student government more accessible for students on campus. We try to embody these ideas in our work.
Ultimately, students will vote for the candidates who they believe will do the best job representing them in the ASUO, and who will work the hardest to improve the student experience at the University of Oregon. Through our tireless work and our commitment to being effective and innovative, we seek to demonstrate to voters that we will govern with these qualities.
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