Isobel Asks The Internet

XIII - The Leadership Election

We published an article which caused controversy within our university newspaper society! What should we do now?

Hey everyone!

So, not long ago, I discovered one of the professors at the university I attend, Dr. Sivam, had been carrying out an affair with another student, Mavis, who was killed at a pool party recently. As I am passionate about institutional transparency, I leaked this information to my friend Katie, who was acting as the head of the university newspaper society while the president, Winona, was in Norway to attend a conference on publication ethics. Katie subsequently ran a story about this scandalous affair on the front page of the student newspaper.

The story was a SENSATION.

Not many people usually read the student newspaper, as the stories are usually about shit like cafeteria menus and recycling initiatives, however once the story about Dr. Sivam and Mavis broke, we sold every single copy that we printed! This NEVER happens, but everyone needed to know about what had been going down. As a result, almost everyone was suspicious that Dr. Sivam had been involved in the death of Mavis; everyone except Brindie, Debra and Marlene (who we HATE because they blame us for the death of Mavis). Dr. Sivam had since gone on sabbatical leave for "personal reasons unrelated to the recent article".

I wasn't a member of the newspaper society, but I thought it would be good for me to stick around for a bit and help reinforce their recent successes with my excellent standing within the community. I was at a recent meeting; we were talking about ideas for the next issue around a premium charcuterie board (sponsored by the supermarket that I'm the head manager of). While we were planning out a story about a member of the cheerleading society who had been arrested for stealing a barrel of compressed air, the door suddenly burst open. It was Winona, and she was looking HOMICIDAL.

I was about to welcome her back from her recent excursion, but she held up a copy of last week's newspaper and screamed "what the FUCK is this?" This was so disrespectful to all of the hard work we had put in to leak Dr. Sivam's personal details and circulate them to the entire university, not to mention how rude it was to interrupt our meeting like this. She was fifteen minutes late too. Her outrageous behaviour displayed a disgusting lack of self-awareness. Katie stood up to address the complaints.

"Hi Winona!" she said breezily. "Sorry if you were confused, but that's last week's copy of the newspaper. We're just having a meeting about next week's issue. Would you like some prosciutto?" 

For some reason, Katie's overtures just seemed to make her even angrier, and she started filling the room with obscenities about how unethical our issue was, which was SO untrue. I got to my feet, and grabbed a nearby bar chart which displayed that our readership had risen by 217% compared to the average numbers of last year. This made Winona defensive, and she was yelling about how unacceptable this was. 

Katie had clearly had enough of Winona's shit, and started accusing her of being an inadequate president of the society. Winona was clearly shocked that anyone could challenge her in such a way, and was momentarily speechless. I used this momentary pause to opine that a leadership challenge such as this called for a snap election. Winona was SO against the idea but the treasurer of the society, Renata, said that it was within the rules! 

We arranged it so that both Katie and Winona would give speeches, and then the whole society would vote for who they thought should be president. Due to my high standing within the community, it was agreed that I would also get a vote; even Winona agreed that I should be franchised in this issue.

The held the election in one of the seminar rooms of the university. I brought some furniture from my supermarket to allow for a more congenial environment from which to give speeches. This was also a great promotional opportunity for our new range of professional-ware. 

Winona was the first to give her speech. Her whole argument was that Katie was unethical which she had NO evidence for. She said that the sourcing for the story about Dr. Sivam was underhand, however our factual evidence came from official documents obtained legitimately, so her accusations were outrageous. She also claimed that publishing the photos of Brindie, Debra and Marlene covered in cow blood was unnecessary. In her eyes, if Katie was to be elected president then we would attract an unsavoury reputation for the newspaper, but that was SO dumb as this had been the only week where anyone had actually read it.

After Winona had finished rambling on, it was Katie's turn. She did AMAZINGLY. She pointed out that no one wanted to read the stories that Winona approved, and that she would nurture much more cutting-edge journalism. We would also be forward thinking with our ideas, so she told the society members that we would let local businesses such as my supermarket and Mallory's restaurant advertise within the paper which would raise money for the society. We'd also do more modern forms of media sharing such as Twitter threads about students' private lives, and maybe even a true crime podcast about the death of Mavis! Everyone looked SO impressed. 

We had to then hold the vote, and Renata said that we needed an independent adjudicator to verify the process. Winona grunted like a robust wildebeest, and said that she'd grab someone random from outside. I was outraged that she would being so careless about the society's democratic values, however she walked in ten seconds later followed by Nigella and I realised that this could work to our advantage. Most people knew that we were good friends with Nigella (who is SO kind and sweet but also really aggressive and dangerous) and this would discourage them from voting against Katie. We got people to write down the name of the person they wanted to vote for, and then they had to physically hand the slip to Nigella.

After everyone had voted, Nigella counted the slips up and announced that 89% of the society had voted for Katie! 6% had voted for Winona, and the other 5% had spoiled their ballot (which was SO dumb). We were so pleased to hear the news, even though we knew that Katie would win! This would be so helpful to us, as we could publish stories that could work to our advantage. Winona was PISSED and she stormed out of the building, which was probably for the best. Katie then elected me as her vice-president. We kept Renata as the treasurer, as she came up to us after the vote to say how happy she was about the new direction of the newspaper. 

What should we write a story about next???