Each week the editorial board reflects on a current issue in Our View. The position taken does not reflect the opinions of everyone on the Hilltop Views staff. This week’s editorial board is composed of Viewpoints Editors Sully Lockett and Kenneth Phipps.

It is the tradition of Hilltop Views every year to air its opinion on the race for the officer positions of the Student Government Association. This year, we’ve evaluated the field of potential candidates, and in doing so, found those we find most worth. It is our pleasure to announce our endorsement of Jace De Leon and Oliver Guerra for president and vice president of the SGA.

This may be remarked upon by some as a controversial endorsement, given their failure as a pair of candidates to meet the basic requirements for running for office, but in this current political climate, we think, what could be more appropriate?

There’s a telling parallel that can be drawn between our own campus culture and that of the national government when someone brazenly and openly calls for support in their presidential race, despite breaking the clearly defined rules. Guerra failed to meet the minimum required GPA for the election, and the ticket was less than transparent in resolving the issue.

How are we as a student body to demand more honesty, more transparency and more accountability from our SGA officials than we as Americans apparently do of our president?

After all, if a decades long history of corruption, sexism, racism, incompetence, failure and collusion with foreign parties both knowing and unknowing, all of this recorded and documented extensively, didn’t prevent Donald Trump from being elected to the highest office in our government, why should something as trivial as a rounding error in one’s report card hold a person back from attaining student office?

It’s an enlightened world we live in — truly, everyone can grow up to be president one day.

What has electing hardworking officials gotten us as a nation? The title of the moral leader of the free world, sure. Signatory of movements to cut down carbon emissions, leader in foreign aid, a high-technology country? Maybe. The biggest single player when disaster relief needs doing, and opponent of fascism, communism and terrorism the world over? Meh.

But why do all that when we can have someone whose politics more closely resemble 1817, than 2017, ripe with graft, corruption, collusion, nepotism and good old fashioned incompetence, inhabit the presidency.

Up to this point, this article has been deeply satirical. We are not seriously endorsing the De Leon and Guerra ticket.

Both the Martinez-Galvan ticket and the Griffith-Rodriguez ticket would serve well enough if elected, we assume. Both pairs of students are informed, experienced and apparently eager to serve the student body in this capacity, and if you vote, you should vote for one of them. Both Carlos and Ben would make more trustworthy, openly transparent presidents.

In the light of truth, our sarcastic endorsement of anyone for SGA doesn’t matter, because SGA doesn’t have any particular authority in the first place. The problem here is not with the candidates themselves; the nature of SGA is to put people who may wish to make a difference into an organization where they can’t.

It doesn’t matter who gets elected, because they, unfortunately, probably won’t get anything, bad or good, done. They’ve been trying to ban smoking from campus for years now, without effect, because the nature of their organization leaves them ill-equipped as agents of change.

You as the students know that if something needs to get done, the best way is to do it yourself. We’ve seen this work in the new political climate with protests and satire and investigations and determination. You don’t need SGA to get stuff done: you have the ability to do it yourself.

We wish you well, candidates, but we have faith in the students of St. Edward’s — not in your organization.