Why do Pacific Students Disregard Student Government?
Photo by Mōhailani Peloso
Low voter turnout is nothing new on this campus!
While elections for Pacific’s newest Student Body President have long since passed, as the school year starts I am left wondering why, exactly, there is no interest in ASUOP among students.
According to Pacific’s website, the Stockton Campus total as of Fall 2024 was 4,935 students. The memo ASUOP posted with the election results indicates a total vote of 459 students. A bit of quick math can tell you this means that less than 10% of Pacific students voted in an election to determine not just the President of their student body, but the leaders of the entire student body!
However, the lack of voting is not the only indicator of campus disinterest in student government. The Presidential Ticket had only one candidate, and the Vice Presidential position was won via write-ins. Four colleges had no winner for their senators at all. This lack of turnout was genuinely astounding to me when I first looked at the numbers. But if you take a look at the overall culture on campus, this turnout might not be as surprising.
While brainstorming this article, I believed the issue to be that Pacific students just did not care. In recent years, there seemed to be a clear lack of organization on campus. I thought back to the seeming outrage at President Callahan due to overadmittance in the pre-dental program. While students at Dugoni School of Dentistry (Pacific’s Dental School in San Francisco) had clear organization and used their voices alongside staff to demand answers when it came to issues involving the University, the anger on the Stockton Campus lived and died on social media.
Then I remembered the ways in which the campus came together in response to TurningPointUSA starting a chapter at Pacific last spring. Dozens of students spoke at gatherings, and staff members willingly put themselves out there to speak against administration. I had never felt more connected to student life at Pacific than I did during that time. At the time I believed that many Pacific students truly cared about this school.
Truthfully, students (and most people) often only truly care about something when they can visualize the direct effect it will have on themselves or those they care about. Therein lies the problem. ASUOP does directly affect every single person here at Pacific! However, there are very few ways for students to make any clear connection to the student government. The disconnect starts not with the lack of candidates or lack of voter turnout, but instead with the lack of direct impact students feel from ASUOP. Many students cannot even name a member of ASUOP, let alone tell you what their role entails. If one does not feel the impact of student government directly affecting them, why should they care? Why would they care? Pacific students do not care about student government because it is something that they can so easily disregard.
I took a look back at previous elections (including special elections) and found that within the past three years the largest voter turnout was 560. This is still an incredibly miniscule number in comparison to campus population. Low student involvement is an issue that has persisted for years. This is not the fault of any student on campus, not even those in ASUOP. Instead, it is a result of campus culture founded on years of disregard for student government.
Sources:
https://www.pacific.edu/about-pacific/fast-facts
https://www.instagram.com/p/DHUQ5w2yRgh/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqMl5EFLIPQ/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==