Run On (And On)

Obvi­ously, if every pledge runs for office like I want, there’s going to be a lot of com­pe­ti­tion. Don’t worry, that’s a good thing!

If you run for a con­tested office, you prob­a­bly really want it, and you’re not run­ning for it just because it’s open. After all, you’ll have to do at least some prepa­ra­tion and have a speech ready and all that. This means you’ll be more invested in the posi­tion, do a bet­ter job, and (most impor­tantly for you) enjoy it more! These same fac­tors mean it will be bet­ter for the chap­ter as a whole, too.

Also, some actives hate elec­tion speeches, but I love them. They show your focus and goals for the posi­tion. Some­times, great new ideas come out dur­ing elec­tion speeches. Even if you run and don’t win, your ideas could be adopted by the ones voted into office, so in a way, you are still accom­plish­ing those goals.

Finally, even if you do lose the elec­tion, just run­ning sets you up in a strong posi­tion to join the com­mit­tee of the office you ran for. Com­mit­tee credit is a require­ment to cross, and you’ll already be contributing!

I know that giv­ing a speech in front of the chap­ter can be intim­i­dat­ing. I know plenty of multi-​term ExCom­mers who are still uncom­fort­able at the front of the room, myself included. But remem­ber, we are all here with a com­mon pur­pose, and every­one wants you to do well. You can ask old actives about how I screwed up the open­ing rit­ual every week when I was Pres­i­dent. (Seri­ously… not once did I get it right. It’s a pretty sim­ple line, too.) But I still went up and talked at every meet­ing, because I knew we had impor­tant things to get done.

Now that I’ve hope­fully con­vinced you to run, let me give you a tip about your speech — please DO NOT do this:

(From Tooth­paste For Din­ner.)

Dur­ing my Plex­Comm elec­tions, a pair of can­di­dates threw lol­lipops into the audi­ence. Some­one got poked in the eye. Need­less to say, that pair did not win.

Tags: Dinhternet