I want to focus on something Rob just said, because I think it is illustrative of a key difference between us.

I would also say that ‘solving’ all the club’s problems in 8 months is probably almost impossible if it ever can be truly done. There will always be problems in some form, the best we can do for STF is minimize the problems from spiraling out of control. To me doing this would take multiple terms by many people in the club.

I disagree with this on many levels.

I disagree completely that the best we can do is “minimize the problems from spiraling out of control.” That’s a really depressing view of things, and I say that as the guy who has spent pretty much the entire campaign saying stuff isn’t working right. It’s pretty bad that the guy who is running for re-election thinks that the best he can do is manage a decline. Who would ever want to do that? Why would you even want to be here in a place like that?

I don’t believe the club is destined to be in decline.

We don’t have that many problems. They are not unsolvable problems. We do not even have to solve all of the problems in 8 months; we can pick the most important problems that we can actually solve, and focus on those. If we focus on accountability, focus on how leadership is supposed to work around here, focus on getting everyone on the same page about those expectations, and then holding people to those expectations, we will solve the worst of our problems. Then we can focus on the whatever the next most pressing problem is. Then we can make progress.

There is an expression my boss at work uses: “Let’s not boil the ocean.” It’s a phrase that comes from World War II, when British ships were being attacked by German submarines. This was such a big problem that was going to cause Britain to lose the war, so there were lots of meetings about what to do about German submarines. In one of them, someone apparently suggested “Well, if we boil the ocean, the submarines will have nowhere to hide and nowhere to escape to, so we could hunt them like that afterwards.” This is obviously a very impractical suggestion for human beings to do on Earth in 1940, given that they didn’t have the capability to boil the ocean back then. Certainly in the 24th century, Starfleet could boil the ocean to solve this problem if they wanted to, but this is still a very impractical and overly complicated way to solve this problem.

We don’t need a big grand solution, or a giant audit, or a bunch of instruction manuals that nobody is actually going to take the time to write, or correct every injustice that ever happened between two people six years ago. We just need to focus on what’s important, apply a little extra effort toward getting people to help with those important things, and then check that the results to make sure things are getting better. That’s it. That’s all it needs to be.

I hope you agree, and vote for Steve and me.

– Joe