Editorial: There needs to be more transparency for those asking questions at election forums

Last year, The Gateway published an op-ed titled Editorial: campaign managers shouldn’t be asking all the questions. While some may have assumed we’re past that problem, I don’t think we’re quite out of the woods yet.

While last year we saw questions from campaign managers, we could be facing a different, sneakier problem now. While campaign managers are recognizable and easily distinguished from the average student, SU staff members, members of council, and other students involved in campus politics who ask candidates planted or biased questions at forums may not be so easy to point out. 

Of course, we have been under the looming threat of planted questions and canned reactions during elections for years. It’s a time-honoured tradition in government, and not just student government.

The difference is, when we look at the provincial and federal governments, there are thousands of eyes and ears reporting who these plants actually are to the press. Student government doesn’t have this same luxury, and try as we might, The Gateway may not always catch these things.

Theoretically, there is a way to fix this. Bylaws, which must be introduced by a councillor, member of the SU executive team, or BoG representative can be passed in as little as a month. A bylaw could be introduced which would force the people asking questions to state their association with either the campaign, or the institution for which it is being run. This would make it easier for the uninitiated to tell who may have an inherent bias in their inquiry, and which candidate it might benefit.

Should someone be caught lying about their association with a particular candidate, campaign, or organization, the candidate for whom they were planted would be disqualified. This may seem severe, but the punishment must match the crime, and lying about affiliation with a campaign equates to willfully misguiding students.

For the average student attending these forums, the line between incestuous, campaign-pandering questions and genuine, student-driven concerns is nearly invisible. How can they know if they are hearing a canned response or a real-time reaction if they don’t know who is asking the question, and what their affiliations are?

There needs to be stronger transparency at forums, specifically for those related to the campaign or institution for which they are inquiring. Sure, a campaign manager asking all the questions can be more blatantly harmful, but bias lives in every person who works at a particular institution. Students should have a right to know who is asking the questions at forums, and not just morally. We as an institution need to introduce this bylaw so that all question-askers at the forum are forced to state any relation they may have to the SU or to a campaign, no matter what exact position they hold. 

As it stands, the average person on campus who isn’t steeped in student governance can’t always be aware of the implications of the questions being asked, or answers being given. Not only that, it’s also unfair to other candidates to have planted questions. While a pre-planned question can certainly benefit specific candidates, it can also be to the detriment of others, or even an outright attack.

Keep your eyes peeled, your ears open, and watch for anything strange. If a question sounds like it caters particularly well to a certain candidate’s platform, find out who’s asking, and what their ties are. Until we can get formal legislation to solve this problem and increase transparency, it’s up to us to be vigilant. So watch closely, and never stop asking questions.