Campus Conservatives' failure to secure debaters shakes their reputation
Campus Conservatives had a gubernatorial debate scheduled for Tuesday for about three months.
But it has since been reduced to a speech by State Sen. Tom George because none of the other gubernatorial candidates could attend. After endless promotion and the Campus Conservatives trying to stir up public interest, the supposed “debate” fell flat on its face.
Although Campus Conservatives was able to salvage at least a sit-down with one candidate for governor, chalk this one up as a loss.
The registered student organization has been drumming up hype over this debate for a couple months, sending out press releases and dispersing flyers all over campus beginning in December. Beyond Sen. George, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, Attorney General Mike Cox, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra and Ann Arbor businessman Rick Snyder were scheduled to be part of the debate Tuesday in Warriner Hall's Plachta Auditorium.
But something was wrong from the beginning. Each press release did not list anyone that confirmed, only that they were invited to CMU. Each candidate received their invitation back in November, giving the Campus Conservatives ample time to adjust the event as needed, depending on who would attend.
As the debate grew closer and the number of confirmations was not growing, the group took the deadline for replies up until the last minute instead of making an executive decision to reorganize accordingly.
This turned out to be a big mistake. Now the event is with one candidate and is moved to Bovee University Center’s Auditorium. How many students will show up to a sit-down with one candidate, especially one they may not even know?
The fact that every candidate but one failed to say 'yes' shows how unorganized the Campus Conservatives was when planning this event. Even an event with Bouchard debating George would have drawn more students had Bouchard not dropped from the debate Friday.
It is understandable when events don’t always happen as planned. Some things fall through. But it’s another story to parade this “debate” around, set the deadline so late for candidates to respond and insinuate to the media that certain candidates are coming when they really aren’t.
If the Campus Conservatives expects anyone to take it seriously, it needs to be more organized and execute its events with added precision and not draw up hype over something so uncertain.
Don’t tell students you’re going to host an event with multiple speakers if none of them have confirmed. Don’t wait until the very last minute to announce there have been significant changes.
Campus Conservatives will hopefully learn from this and won’t let another event run into the ground.
