This year's Undergraduate Student Government presidential race is reaching unparalleled heights.
On Monday, reports surfaced that another presidential hopeful was seen struggling to keep his emotions in check. For the record, that means the four candidates are at a dead heat in the battle between wet and dry eyes.
Matt Kenney is one presidential candidate who hasn't yet let the tears flow, and he's not about to anytime soon.
"Being devoted to something is one thing," Kenney said. "Crying about it is another. If I lost to those two, there's got to be something wrong. They need to man up."
The inaugural tear-shedder was Richard Sales, when his textbook-rental bill was tabled at a USG Senate meeting and sent back to the University Affairs Committee for further consideration on Feb. 21.
"I'm emotionally stricken right now. This is the darkest day of Senate I have ever seen," Sales said at the meeting.
The next sob story belonged to Ross Meyer.
Sales said he found violations in Meyer's campaign, and planned to file election complaints.
"Just having rumors and whispers, that's probably the toughest," Meyer said. "I talked to a lot of the candidates about running a positive campaign. So far, I've held up my end of the bargain."
Vice presidential candidate Brad Smith -- another non-crier -- said he wasn't surprised to hear about the incidents.
"It's exactly what we're talking about, [the other candidates] taking themselves too seriously," Smith said. "Basically, they're running for a glorified student council presidency. These people get so caught up in these great ideas. Sales can't [deliver] on half the crap he promises."
Now don't get us wrong. Having passion about an issue is very important in any political race. And we'll definitely take a few tears over the general hullabaloo that took place last year between the camps of Yaser Alamoodi and David Werner.
In that race, 21 separate complaints were filed about the elections. This time around, Sales said he found campaign violations by Meyer but decided not to seek further action.
As a whole, this presidential race is being run much more diplomatically than that of a year ago. Sales and Meyer should be commended for the time and effort put into this election.
But still, getting this emotional over a campus election?
If nothing else, the candidates should listen to Tom Hanks' character from "A League of Their Own." Like he said, "Are you crying? There's no crying in baseball."
Or in this case, USG elections.
