It’s the beginning of campaigning season and the elections are a-go! All over campus, groups of people, armed with colourful manifestos, attack unsuspecting students on the way to their lectures and seminars.

These campaigners can be seen from outside the Windsor Building, with their colorful posters, all the way down to the Hub where, in smaller groups, they stop those lone students going about their business. They are very hard to miss and even harder to dodge. Getting to The Store was a real adventure through all the people tightly packed into the (surprisingly narrow) stretch outside Windsor. It seems that just at the moment when you think you have managed to quietly bypass a group of particularly aggressive campaigners you find yourself confronted by an other group.

Therefore tempers are running high around campus. It’s not that people aren’t interested in their candidates. It just becomes mildly frustrating when a single campaign intercepts you five times on campus. I noticed quite a few people sheltering themselves from the inevitable bombardment of manifestos.

This being my first election season, I have found the campaigning particularly overwhelming. Along these lines it also rarely seems to be the candidates themselves who are passing out the flyers and manifestos. I found myself asking these campaigners why I should vote for their candidate, just to see if they can give me a genuine answer. If I’m lucky I end up talking to the candidate by accident. It even surprised me once when I realized that the person that I was talking to was the actual candidate. This is why I think that the candidate question time is a such good idea for Freshers’ and old students alike.

In the evening a group of campaigners could also be found in Founder’s dining hall. You could vaguely compare the campaigning in the dining hall to the way in which sharks circle around smaller fish. This was especially clear when swarms of campaigners could be seen talking to the smaller groups of intimidated students. It became almost amusing. The one thing the teams don’t seem to realise is that people tend to get irritated by the constant flow of people that interrupt their dinner.

I do have to say that the campaigners in the dining halls were rather informative as campaigners do at least, for the most part, know what they’re talking about and fully support their candidates. Since this campaigning is supposed to inform people about the different candidates and their manifestos, then I do feel adequately prepared on who is running and what they’re running for. Even if its just through the screaming of ‘vote *insert name here* for *insert position here*’ every few minutes.

So even though by the end of the day the crowded campus had begun to take its toll on the students. I do have to say that there was some great creativity behind the campaigns. Personally, I was tempted to vote for certain candidates based solely on the fact that they had bright, eye catching posters. It certainly grabs your attention and that, on its own, could get one candidate many votes.

At the very least, the rush of campaigning is a positive change of pace from the gloomy weather that we are experiencing at the moment. One thing I do admire the campaigners for is staying outside and selling their candidates in the misty rain. It could not have been good for their posters, manifestos or health. This is however the inevitability of campaigning this time of year, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed down this election season at all. At the end of day one, it is clear that this is just the beginning and we will no doubt see a lot more campaigning over the next few days.