[1123] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Increasing Representation, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jimmy_B,MajMoola,MechWarrior,etc._)
Wed Mar 13 14:49:52 2002
Message-ID: <200203131947.OAA29256@buzzword-bingo.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 14:47:24 -0500
From: "Jimmy_B,MajMoola,MechWarrior,etc._Chien-ta Wu" <jimmbswu@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
One question that has been raised was,
How would Rhett do differently from others, that he'd increase
the UA's representativeness for the student body?
Given that, over the past 5+ years, many people have tried many
diff't things (food, going door to door, prizes, etc.) to increase
student response, to no significant effect, that is a daunting question.
[Currently, the MIT student respond to voluntary surveys at approx. 10%.]
I am not speaking for Rhett, but I can analyze his past actions. I don't
know Victor personally, so I will not analyze him today.
Rhett has been very innovative at getting attention, and is readily
noticed in a group situation. For example, his appearances at
Steer Roast and 2.670. His several attempts with world records.
Appearing on Junkyard Wars, etc.
He has also started buying votes with the promise of payment.
If he is elected (>500), then he would have elicited response of greater
than 10%, which is the current MIT student response rate. Therefore,
he would have demonstrated the validity of this method for surveys.
He could repeat this method to buy survey response from MIT students,
increasing his legitimacy, and increasing UA's representativeness.
[Obviously, there's the issue of biasing results, and we can deal with that
in another email.]
Moreover, given his past record, Rhett will likely find innovative methods
to call student attention to important issues, and educate them on the
substances & principles involved. With that, he can rally students to
his cause.
Therefore, because Rhett is his own PR machine, he should be successful
in carrying out his duties as UAP.
So that was that,
B, crackpot and defender of the status quo
-----------
http://www.mit.edu/~jimmbswu "Who Dares, Wins."
--UK SAS
"It is good that war is so terrible,
else we should grow too fond of it."
--R. E. Lee
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation on the use of the mailing lists mit-talk, all-talk,
mit-news, housing-talk, and the mit-talk Zephyr class is available at:
http://web.mit.edu/institvte/talk/
