The NUIM Apprentice Presidental Election Task
This task invites each of the three student teams to contest the NUIM Apprentice Presidential election – and the stipulation that you need to be an Irish citizen aged 35 years, or over, will not apply here!
Teams must select their candidate, try to get her or him officially nominated, run a vibrant and exciting campaign and help prep their presidential election candidate for the election debate at the October 25th class where they will be harrangued by guest debate host, Bill-cent Browne.
Teams’ efforts will be judged on the basis of the three elements of this task – (i) the nomination process, (ii) the campaign, (iii) the debate. The team that wins each task will be awarded 3 points and the runners-up 1 point, with points being added up to decide the overall winner, ‘honourable’ also-rans and the team that will be in the “firing line” for this week. If teams are tied, the final placings will be determined by team performances in the campaign section of this task.
The project manager (who should not be the candidate) will effectively be the campaign manager for their team’s candidate.
1. The Nomination Process:
Any of you following the long presidential campaign saga will be aware of the Byzantine rules dictating the candidate nomination process. Of course, to make this task real, similarly obscure rules will apply here. For their candidate to be officially declared a candidate for the office they will have to attain nominations across categories (i), (ii) and (iii), which can be supplemented/compensated for by nominations from category (iv):
(i) A (verified) nomination from at least ONE of the following people in Geography/Sociology/NIRSA: Mark Boyle, Brendan Gleeson, Mary Benson, Rob Kitchin, Jane Grey, Mary Corcoran, Orla Dunne.
Note that each of these people can only nominate one candidate – if they do nominate two people then Bill will accept the first verified nomination given to him. Note also that there is no limits on the number of nominations that a team can pick up.
(ii) A (verified) nomination from at least TWO of the following people in Geography/Sociology/NIRSA: Rhona Bradshaw, Justina Senkus, Claire McGing, Sandra Walsh, Conor Murphy, Ronan Foley, Gerry Kearns, Sinead Kelly, Karen Till, Neasa Hogan, John Sweeney, Paul Gibson, Mary Weld, Mary Gilmartin, Mary Murphy, Peter Murray, Aphra Kerr, Honor Fagan, John O’Brennan, Mark Farrelly.
Note that each of these people can only nominate one candidate – if they do nominate two people then Bill will accept the first verified nomination given to him. Note also that there is no limits on the number of nominations that a team can pick up.
(iii) A (verified) nomination from at least ONE “real” politician: Must be a current TD, Senator, MEP, county/city councillor or presidential election candidate (for the Aras election, not the NUIM Apprentice election!!!), or someone who was a TD or Senator at the start of the year. Note that each of these people can only nominate one candidate. Note also that there is no limits on the number of nominations that a team can pick up. In fact the bigger the number and the more high profile the person(s) the better… Levels of success in this category will probably decide which team wins this section of the task. (“Nominating” here may well involve the candidate being pictured with the politician (who is hopefully giving a thumbs up), or that politician endorsing the candidate on the internet – a “Yes” response to a “will you back me for NUIM Apprentice please” query on Twitter or Facebook would suffice. Main thing is that Bill must have evidence…
(iv) A (verified) nomination from any celebrity or a political commentator/analyst, preferably one that has some association to the NUIM Apprentice task (e.g. a relationship to Irish politics or “The Apprentice” show) Note that each of these people can only nominate one candidate. Note also that there is no limits on the number of nominations that a team can pick up. In fact the bigger the number and the more high profile the person(s) the better… Levels of success in this category will probably decide which team wins this section of the task. (“Nominating” here may well involve the candidate being pictured with the celebrity/political commentator (who is hopefully giving a thumbs up), or that celebrity/political commentator endorsing the candidate on the internet – a “Yes” response to a “will you back me for NUIM Apprentice please” query on Twitter or Facebook would suffice. Main thing is that Bill must have evidence… Extra marks will be attained for getting nominations from celebrities/commentators who Bill especially likes 
All nominations (or evidence of these) should be with Bill by no later than 4.30pm on Tuesday 25th October. If a team has an insufficient number of nominations, then Bill may decide to impose a penalty (points deduction) or may even disallow the candidate from contesting the election. However if a team has insufficient nominations from the first three categories, they may be able to compensate for this fact by doing well in getting nominations from category (iv). The teams with the most nominations and/or with the most high profile nominations will win this category.
2. The Campaign
The team will have to devise a campaign around their candidate. Bill doesn’t want to spurn your creativity by suggesting what you should be doing here, but he or his acolyte, Adrian Kavanagh, will make themselves available for consultation. Bill himself doesn’t do long-winded advice, so will restrict his own personal consultations to his Twitter site (i.e. advice from Bill can only be given in 140 characters or less!): http://twitter.com/billkavllen
The regular Apprentice Forum discussion page on the NIR602 Moodle page will be where campaigning events (imaginary or, better still, real) should be announced and where teams can engage in friendly discussions with the opposition and the “electorate” (all of which will suspiciously look like Adrian Kavanagh…)
The campaign team may need to appoint a “dust buster” (look that up yourselves)…
If the campaign team can generate a level of interest in their candidate outside of just the NUIM Apprentice community, and show evidence of this, this will be deemed as “very good”…
So be creative as possible here and give your candidate every chance of winning the election…
Note – throughout the campaign opinion polls will be released, giving teams an idea of what impact their campaign is having at that period of time…although polls are deceptive beasts and prone to fluctuations…
3. The Candidate and the Debate
The candidate, no matter what the provocation, should try to be as presidential as possible all throughout the campaign.
The candidate shouldn’t have much to do with the actual running of the campaign, but should put themselves at their team’s disposal when photo opportunities are required…etc.
The candidate should realise that this post has the same level of power as the real President’s position…
The candidate should have one “big idea” for what they would do with the NUIM Apprentice presidency and hammer this home relentlessly… This may be quite an “airy fairy” aspiration one (given that this role will not carry that much power…well actually it will carry no power…)
At the big debate, the candidate will have between two and three minutes to talk about their view of the presidency and their “big idea“, they will accept one question from their opponents and one from the floor and then will be harrangued by Bill-cent Browne.
The Task on October 26th
10.05am: Before the big debate, each team will get a 3-5 minute window where they will describe their campaigning efforts over the week. This will be followed by the debate.
After a break to allow simmering emotions to calm down, Bill will announce (i) the winning candidate and (ii) the scores for the different teams. He will then invite the project manager of the third placed team to bring two people to join him in the Boardroom where (at least) one of them will be fireddddddd…
Adrian Kavanagh's Blog 
November 12, 2011 at 5:33 pm |
Like this one too!