Almost immediately after winning that by-election, I was faced
with the question of whether to run for an Exec post for the
following year - most immediately with the question of whether
to run for President. Initially I tried to persuade myself that it
would be a silly thing to do - in terms of the time commitment, but
as time went on, I realised that I very much wanted to do it, and that
I'd be good at it. In addition to that, everyone around me seemed to
be assuming that I'd run - with at least one person trying to
persuade me to do so. These thoughts occupied my mind for several days
- interfering with my ability to do anything else; that's the intensity
of Oxford, things that aren't especially important can consume you
almost completely for days. At the same time as trying to make up my
mind about running for President, I was VP and was trying to pick
things up as fast as I could. I was very much thrown in at the deep
end with minute writing, and the room ballot later took on a life of
its own.
I eventually decided that I was going to run - I can't remember my
exact logic - probably along the lines of 'why not, I'll never
have this chance again, why not take advantage of it?'. I
think Matthew's words - about wanting people to stand so that there
was a contested election also played a part; if the electorate were
stupid enough to want me, then they were welcome to me! I then started
in upon manifesto writing. I'd taken the lessons of the VP campaign
too much to heart - manifestos aren't all that important, but they
do require some thought (specifically - always pick a legible font),
and in the case of Presidential manifestos there needs to be some
indication that you are aware of the serious issues. My sense of fair
play hindered me - there were plenty of things I knew (from being VP),
but didn't know whether I was supposed to know (like the Van-Noorden
index), and being fairly shy, didn't want to ask 'Am I allowed to make use
of what I know?'.
I was very much alone throughout that campaign, and consequently
didn't have anyone to give me a sense of perspective on the
election as a whole. I made huge mistakes - mainly through a lack of
planning (unlike the previous election, where neither Tom or I had done much campaigning,
campaigning was expected this time), I hadn't thought about posters
for a poster campaign, I was being so careful not to repeat my
previous mistakes by promising things I couldn't deliever, that I
didn't promise enough (most first years didn't know who could deliver what, so
people got away with promising things they would later realise weren't within
their remits). Not through lack of ability, but through simple lack of
thought/planning, I didn't convey my understanding of important issues
(things like battels levels, OUSU, book grants etc) to the JCR. To
this day, I'd still say I'd have done a good job (and that's not
a slur on either of the other candidates) - but I didn't
demonstrate that through my campaign.
That hust was a much more pleasant experience than the previous one
(something which made me slightly suspicious - husting isn't supposed
to be pleasant); much of the 'heat' had gone - it'd been used in that
first hust and couple of the more 'nasty' questioners weren't present
due to Finals. I'd learnt how to deal with 'nasty/silly' questions
extremely well; what I hadn't quite grasped was the need to make the
odd substantive point inspite of the silly questioning. That said,
though it was much nicer, it wasn't without its highlights -
I remember whispering 'It's OK, just do it, don't think about it.'
to one of the other candidates as she was about to do the 'modern dance
' question, she seemed very scared.
As had happened two weeks previously, Matthew announced the
results in Front Quad. I can't recall the exact figures, but the
announcement went Kat --, then Chris --, (at which point I suddenly
suspected something was seriously wrong - those two figures were far
too high - I tried to add them together - but by the time my thoughts
had got that far, I'd heard...), Karen six, at this stage, I seem to recall
a moment of absolute silence as everyone 'remembered' me for the first time,
and wondered what they'd just done, and then I heard RON 34. My first
reaction was one of shock/disbelief - I was perfectly prepared for not
winning, but I hadn't expected to have lost by
quite so much. I have absolutely no idea who was standing near
me at the time, but there was a definite expectation that I'd start
crying. Crying was the last thing I felt like doing - I'd run, lost
and was extremely happy that Chris had won (election by the AV system
- the numbers above were first preferences), besides which, there
is something to be said for being
gracious in defeat; so I did the only thing I could, I smiled, and
I continued to smile - since it seemed to be a good way to demonstrate
to everyone that was commiserating with me that I actually was OK.
A couple of weeks later Andy told me I'd taken it well, and that meant
far more to me than it probably should have done.
Despite losing as badly as I did, I've never regretted running -
I've regretted the mistakes I made, and that people weren't more
honest with me: I discovered afterwards that many of my friends had
suspected I was going to lose very badly, and hadn't told me - that
hurt. It's always hard to predict election outcomes, but I'd have
been grateful for whatever warning they could have given. Worse than
that was realising that there were certainly more than six people who
had said or given me the very clear impression that they'd vote for
me. In some ways the outcome was the best of both worlds - I'd wanted to run
for all the reasons I've explained, but I really was unsure of the amount
of work involved, so running and losing was, in that sense, a good thing.
At some level my heart was never in it; I kept too much of myself back.
But there are always lessons to be learnt; the other main one for me
was that losing to RON was nowhere close to being as humiliating an
experience as I'd imagined.
Trinity 2000 - Elections, elections, part three
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