From making posters to giving stump speeches, candidates in student body elections do anything imaginable to grow name recognition and garner votes.Campaigning effectively takes creativity and resourcefulness. We respect that and know candidates always want the upper hand.
But in this year’s election, one candidate went too far. It’s one thing to pass out keychains with your name on it, but it’s another thing to send Facebook friend requests to thousands of USC students you don’t know.
That’s what James Strickland recently did.
What bothers us most about this: Strickland sent the requests long before candidates filed for election in early January. And we feel deceived.
True, it may have been partially our fault for accepting the friend request of a stranger. But in a university of such a large population, our networks are infinite.
If someone friends us on Facebook and we share 80 mutual friends, chances are pretty high we’ll accept, believing we have perhaps met this person at some point in our college career.
What we did not expect, however, was that a candidate would casually friend us on Facebook only to use the “friendship” as a part of his campaign network a few months later.
It’s shady, it’s unprofessional and it’s just not the best method of campaigning. And now that people have started to call Strickland out on it by posting tongue-in-cheek comments on his Facebook, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.
To Strickland and future candidates, use Facebook for people you already know. It’s a networking tool, not a tool to befriend random strangers.
We’ll eat our words the day President Barack Obama starts “liking” our statuses.