Ladies and Gentlemen of the faculty, staff, and administration of Pomona College and esteemed fellow students, I would like to take this opportunity to declare my candidacy for the vice-presidency for the 2000-2001 school year. Yes, I realize that I’m a bit early here, but I wanted get a jump on the competition. Hey, if Al and George W. can show this kind of ambition for a post as lowly as the one they’re running for, why shouldn’t I get an early start?

In reality, I don’t want the job, but it seems in fashion to run for the position. I’ll just be the first to toss my hat into the ring that will inevitably fill with the seventy-two others that will swear they’ll do the job better than anyone else possibly could. At least with me you’ll know well in advance the one person whom you shouldn’t vote for.

So let’s see. If I’m going to be running in this race, I’ve got to come up with a few things that will help people to distinguish me from the droves of other candidates. I need a catchy slogan, some irreverent posters plastered over every square inch of the campus, and a policy for improving Pomona. Preferably it will be one that will ease the transition into the twenty-first century and bump us up over those few colleges that stubbornly insist on remaining above us in that darn US News college poll. Shouldn’t be too hard for a guy with my savvy for getting people to come together in support of a common goal.

All right, time for a slogan. Personally, I like "You Can’t Spell Extravaganza without Ganz," or "Vote for Jacob, For the Good of Mankind." What do you think? I don’t know though, maybe those don’t communicate my worthiness quite well enough. Oh well, what can you do? It’s only a slogan. And besides, I have a full year to come up with another one, so what’s the rush, right?

Next stop on the train to electionville: funny posters. I don’t like this idea. Who came up with it in the first place? Anyway, I don’t have time to be designing a bunch of posters right now. I’m a busy man. I have things to do. And working with all that paper couldn’t help but give you some really nasty paper cuts. So I think I’ll pass on the posters.

Huh. This whole running for office thing is a heck of a lot easier than I imagined. When I sat down to think about it I figured that it would be tiresome, backbreaking work, but this is pretty simple.

Now we move on to my policy. As you all know, policy should be the cornerstone of any successful politician’s campaign. But you know what? I don’t really want to deal with having to do a lot of work, so big sweeping plans for all the amazing things I will accomplish while in office aren’t really for me. I really think it would be a lot more fun to try to accomplish a lot of pointless little things that don’t really serve anyone. That way I can pad my resume without ever doing any sort of worthwhile work. Besides, if I actually got things done, what would the candidates for the following year pledge to do? Make things all shitty again? I’ve really got to consider their well being along with my own. So see, I’m concerned about the future of our school. Vote for me. For the future of our school.

So now you may be asking, "Jacob, what exactly do you expect to be doing all year? You can’t expect us to take you seriously if you’re not going to have some sort of game plan."

Right you are. However, my strategy for success does not adhere to the normal, pessimistic "Let’s look at everything that’s wrong and fix it" type of campaigning that you have probably seen so much over the past couple of weeks. Instead, I prefer to look at things positively. My plan for serving Pomona is to point out all the really cool little things that already exist here and tell you what I think should be done with them. That way I can come off as extremely innovative and clever, but still won’t have to do a bit of work. Get the picture? Vote for me, because I have a killer campaign strategy.

Without further ado, here are some cool things about Pomona and the surrounding area that you may not have noticed before [Note: Check out the cool bullets. Vote for me and you’ll get a candidate who’s organized, too!] :

• Everyone here always talks about how there’s nothing to do. That’s simply not true. I know some people–your very own classmates in fact–that went fishing in a pond that I was not even aware of up on Harvey Mudd’s campus. That’s the kind of spirit we need around here. Follow that trailblazing lead and you’ll go places.

• We have a clock tower that’s practically begging to be covered in a giant prophylactic. Just think, wouldn’t it be great to have a giant erect penis saluting you on the way to lunch at Frary?

• Someone here lives in Kris Kristofferson’s room, and someone else lives in Roy Disney’s. I don’t really know what you might be able to do about this, but it’s a pretty magical thought isn’t it?

• The eucalyptus trees all over the place kind of look like they’re naked people with saggy skin around the armpits. Take a look. There’s really no denying it. If nothing else, we can use this fact to get people congregating in front of the trees. And when we get together, anything is possible.

• I propose that more people start making up words and inserting them into everyday conversation. It’s usually best if you just bastardize a word that already exists, because then people will be more likely to believe that you aren’t just pulling it out of your ass. For example, you could start using a word like "ponics." Hydroponics is a word, but "ponics" isn’t (all of you run to your dictionary now and check!). Try using it in a conversation tomorrow. Something like, "My MoBio class is starting our ‘ponics’ unit next week." This should work, especially if you tell it to a humanities major.

I could probably come up with a bunch more of these ideas, but that would take at least a little bit of effort, and I’m just not really willing to invest that sort of thing in a campaign. So remember me when elections roll around next year. I’ll be the one standing next to the giant condom.