Moonlight streamed into The Gallery on the top floor of the Nest while student politicians and their supporters buzzed, awaiting the results of weeks of campaigning.
Hushed whispers, clicking cameras and nervous smiles — it was a normal AMS Elections results night.
When it was time for the winner of the 2023 presidential race to be announced, anticipation filled the air. Then-AMS VP Administration Ben Du was up against Remy the Rat, a campus meme represented by English honours student Esmé Decker.
Decker — who previously ran a joke campaign as Remy in 2022 to increase student participation and voter turnout — won by a margin of just over 600 votes.
But the funny thing is, Decker wasn’t the first joke candidate to win an AMS election. Joke candidates have appeared on ballots deep in the annals of UBC history, resurfacing every generation to use mockery to spark real conversations about UBC and the AMS.
The first joke candidate students could vote for was Joseph Q. Blotz in 1941. Blotz ran on a platform of creating a “secret plank” and received 20 of the 1,379 votes cast that year. Silly joke candidates have become a staple since. In 2012, a student ran for VP academic and university affairs as Party Rock and wanted to “scrap the summer term and install an exchange program to Ibiza.” A student posing as V from V for Vendetta ran for AMS president in 2015, and in 2022, then-AMS councillor Mathew Ho wore a trash can on his head to represent the Arts Student Centre in the VP finance by-election.
In the ‘90s, UBC’s most prolific electoral slate formed: the Radical Beer Faction (RBF). Slates, now banned in most AMS Elections races, allowed a group of candidates to run under one party.
“The Radical Beer Faction was formed to deal with student politics the way it should be dealt with. Drunk,” read its website.
In 1991, tucked in the UBC Physics Society room in the Hennings Building, then-science student Ari Giligson and his friends would talk about anything and everything from campus goings-on to philosophy while eating donuts and drinking coffee.
The group noticed that students were running in slates in AMS Elections.
“We really [hadn’t] seen that before, and we thought it was kind of weird and kind of ridiculous,” said Giligson. “People were putting together slates as if they were political parties.”
Giligson’s friends approached him, asking him to run for AMS president, and the RBF was born.
“I wasn't the leader,” said Giligson. “But because … I just finished up a run as the SUS President, they decided, ‘Hey, we'll put you forward as a presidential candidate because people know your face.’”
Despite being a cynical commentary on slate culture, the RBF also wanted to bolster the campus community by holding a party — and reimbursing it as a campaign expense.
“And one of the expenses will be a keg of beer,” Giligson said.
That year, the RBF took 31 per cent of the popular vote. Though that election was Giligson’s only one with the RBF, the slate continued to run. What started as a joke became a movement that outlasted its founders.
Thirteen years later, an RBF candidate started to make waves on campus — and almost won.
While pursuing a PhD in physics, Darren Peets ran his 2.5 feet tall, 191 pound fire hydrant for UBC’s Board of Governors (BoG).
“I had a pet fire hydrant,” said Peets in a 2008 interview with The Ubyssey. “The sensible thing to do would be to run it for public office.”
During his time at UBC, Peets ran as the Fire Hydrant three times, starting as part of the RBF in 2004.
By the time Peets graduated with his PhD in 2008, many involved in UBC and the AMS were singing his praises. At the end of an AMS Council meeting, then-VP Academic and University Affairs Alex Lougheed moved a motion for Council to “formally recognize and thank the Fire Hydrant, Darren Peets, for his long-standing contributions to the society and the campus.”
The same year, then-UBC President Stephen Toope told The Ubyssey, “I have always appreciated Darren's passion for UBC, his hard work on hard issues, his perspective, and a sense of humour that tends to grow on you.”
But when he first ran as the Fire Hydrant, Peets was more interested in cracking jokes than cracking open strategic plans.
His first campaign, in 2004, started because he “ended up with a fire hydrant,” said Peets in a 2024 interview. “I approached some of the people who were involved in … The Radical Beer Faction, because most years they had one inanimate object.”
The RBF was interested, and Peets’s first foray into joke campaigning was a success.
The Fire Hydrant lost that election, 782 votes behind the elected candidates. But going into the 2005 election, Peets realized a Fire Hydrant win was a legitimate possibility.
“People within the AMS, by this point, did realize that I knew quite a lot about the university and thought I would be good for the role,” said Peets. “And there were people suggesting that they should vote for the Fire Hydrant because they would get me on board.”
According to Ubyssey coverage from the time, students saw the Fire Hydrant as a protest vote against then-UBC President Martha Piper’s administration.
“The president, the board and the executive were making a lot of decisions that sort of alienated the students, and there was a lot of frustration,” said Peets.
In 2005, the Fire Hydrant clinched the fourth place spot, only six votes behind the elected candidates.
Running as a hydrant wasn’t all fun and games — Peets would get stopped by Campus Security for carrying the mascot with him around campus.
“Usually they would have questions,” said Peets. “‘What are you doing with that?’ ‘Running it for the University Board of Governors.’ ‘Where are you going with that?’ ‘The Hennings Building.’”
Despite losing his Fire Hydrant elections, Peets got more involved in student politics with the Graduate Student Society and AMS Council. Peets also advised successful student BoG candidates, helping them advocate against UBC’s planned-and-abandoned University Boulevard expansion which would have included condo housing and an underground bus loop.
Eventually, in 2007, Peets was convinced to run for BoG under his own name. He won.
“By that point, I had quite a long list of things that I wanted to change in nearly all aspects of the university, and I'd run out of jokes,” Peets said.
Peets said running as the Fire Hydrant gave him the courage to seriously throw his hat in the ring.
“I also felt more confident actually doing it as me, because it takes a lot to put yourself out there like that.”
Peets isn’t the only joke candidate turned serious politician. 2011/12 AMS President Jeremy Ross-McElroy ran as joke candidate Kommander Keg for VP administration in 2009.
The RBF was “dormant” with the ban on slates, and campus culture was starting to crack, said Ross-McElroy. University administrators were denying applications for beer garden events and the “campus RCMP were dramatically reducing what they would and wouldn't allow on campus.”
“We were seeing a dwindling of campus life,” said Ross-McElroy. “This was back before most of the bars and restaurants were open on campus … so Friday afternoon beer garden culture was a really important part of the campus experience.”
So a group of UBC students, including Ross-McElroy, came together to protest UBC’s “war on fun.”
Ross-McElroy said he advocated for less strict liquor laws on campus while running as Kommander Keg — an empty spray-painted black keg with a mustache and beret that was wheeled around on a dolly.
He also said he and his fellow joke candidates — who were all involved with student government before their joke campaigns — brought real ideas to debates despite satirizing elections.
After losing his election as Kommander Keg, Ross-McElroy ended up representing arts students on AMS Council, and later ran for AMS office for VP external and, in 2011, president. He said he was motivated by a broader trend of the university suppressing all student-led events, not just partying.
“I ran as a joke and realized that I can have real impact, and then, ultimately, through joining AMS Council, realized that I had an opportunity to run for real and was successful in getting elected,” said Ross-McElroy.
While Peets and Ross-McElroy both had to run as themselves to win, students have elected two joke candidates running under a joke name. But in both cases, by the end of their runs, these joke candidates weren’t joking.
In 2017, then-fourth year engineering student and EUS President Alan Ehrenholz ran as the Engineering Cairn, which materialized at debates as a six-inch tall replica of the Cairn on the south side of Main Mall.
Ehrenholz and a few friends started the campaign for a laugh.
“Our plan was to have me come to debates with mini cairns, make people laugh and to make the election period a little more fun for everyone involved,” wrote Ehrenholz in a 2017 Ubyssey opinion letter. “Initially, I never intended to organize a ‘real’ campaign. This was for us and the rest of campus to enjoy.”
Ehrenholz’s platform always mixed silly and serious, promising effective Council governance, increased support for councillors and implementing porous concrete on campus (as opposed to standard non-porous concrete).
But that year, based on candidates’ intangible platforms, collective lack of experience and debate underperformance, The Ubyssey disendorsed every presidential candidate.
“We felt comfortable telling voting students that they really had ‘no good options,’” wrote The Ubyssey in an editorial.
That is until Ehrenholz announced he was stepping out from behind the Cairn and running as himself after that year’s Great Debate following “significant thought and encouragement" from the people he worked with.
Ehrenholz then released a more serious platform including working on the AMS's strategic plan and continuing community consultation for UBC's sexual misconduct policy.
Despite emerging as a more serious candidate, Ehrenholz won the presidential election as The Cairn in March 2017, making him the first joke candidate to win an election at UBC.
The second joke candidate to win the presidential election was Decker, who won in 2023 after running under Remy the Rat in 2022. In 2022, Decker came second by 1,597 votes.
Decker first ran as a joke candidate to promote informed democracy and social justice under a platform emphasizing food security and climate justice. And after seeing how students responded to their first campaign, Decker ran again as a serious contender under the same name and similar platform.
“I'm here because students asked me to be here,” said Decker in 2023.
Despite UBC’s long history with joke candidates, according to AMS Elections Administrator Max Holmes, on paper there’s technically no such thing.
“Every candidate is able to run under, essentially, what we consider a nickname,” said Holmes.
According to the AMS Elections Handbook, candidates can run under a nickname at the discretion of the elections administrator, as long as the nickname doesn’t indicate club affiliation and isn’t “obscene or libellous or an attack on other candidates.”
Holmes, who was also the elections administrator when Ehrenholz and Decker won their respective elections, said the Elections Committee always knows the identity of joke candidates — or candidates that go by a nickname — since they have to ensure candidates are eligible to run in AMS Elections.
But other student unions have stricter guidelines around joke candidates.
For example, the University of Alberta Student Union’s bylaws state that “any race solely contested by a joke Candidate shall be considered uncontested,” and that joke candidates can only claim two-thirds of expenses for reimbursement.
Holmes doesn’t think those guidelines are necessary.
“We think that students are smart … and are able to make choices on their own,” said Holmes. “Students are able to see the consequence of their vote whether or not they're voting for somebody who is running under their own name, or running under a different name.”
Holmes also said if the Elections Committee were to put restrictions on joke candidates, that would constitute “meddling in the democratic process.”
“We don't see any reason for why we would disenfranchise the choice of voters, and [if] they decide to elect somebody with a different name on the ballot, that's their choice, and we respect that,” said Holmes.
Though Ehrenholz and Decker ran under silly monikers, Holmes said it would be “quite inaccurate” to describe them as joke candidates.
“It'd be more accurate to describe them as serious candidates that ran under different names,” said Holmes. “When both of those candidates won the presidency, they won having released serious platforms, a serious website, done serious ground campaigning, done absolutely everything that another candidate would do trying to win the presidency.”
“Ultimately, our view of it is no different than somebody running under their own name and winning,” said Holmes.
When asked if joke candidates increase election turnout, Holmes said “allowing different levels of seriousness … does help with engagement.”
“On turnout, I think anything that reduces the number of candidates that you might have running in the election is going to have a detrimental effect,” he said.
Presidential elections turnout was some of the highest UBC has seen in the years when Ehrenholz and Decker won. Ehrenholz’s year brought in over 8,000 votes for the presidential race, and Decker’s year had over 10,000 students cast votes, the highest presidential turnout in AMS history.
Holmes said it’s important to remember that despite Ehrenholz and Decker’s wins, many joke candidates run and lose their elections. If joke candidates drive turnout, they could also be leading to their own losses.
“Ultimately, we think that if we brought in restrictions, it could hurt turnout and engagement which is why any restrictions we'd bring in would be extremely minor … nothing that would discourage people from running under a different name.”
Joke candidate wins show that student discontent has power. From dwindling student life to climate justice, joke candidates advocate for student issues that some ‘mainstream’ candidates haven’t.
Changes to current joke candidate rules won’t happen anytime soon, according to Holmes. He and Peets both said joke candidates contribute to a functioning student democracy.
“Joke candidates in general, I think, are good for the system,” said Peets.
Giligson said joke candidates hold the AMS accountable while emphasizing student discontent.
“I think most of the time [joke] candidates actually get support … it reveals some frustration that people have,” said Giligson.
And Ross-McElroy said he’s happy the joke candidate tradition has continued.
“The work that the student society undertakes is incredibly important,” said Ross-McElroy. “While recognizing that that stuff is very important, you also need to make sure that you're not taking yourself too seriously.”
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