By Zach Marks
As of 8 p.m. Sunday night, Harrison Marks’ campaign website had 566 hits. If the number of visitors to a candidate’s site has any correlation to the number of supporters he has, Harrison will need to draw a bit more traffic to be competitive in this race. Then again, Marks’ site is the only one that has a traffic counter, so it’s hard to tell who’s getting the most love on the internets.
Each of the candidates’ sites do some things better than those of their opponents. Marks’ features some sweet pics and a forum for visitors, but you have to register to participate, which pretty much renders it useless.
Harrison Marks gets his zen on in an attempt to woo the crucial 5 o’clock yoga bloc.
Katrina Landeta welcomes visitors to her site with a beautiful smile and dimples that may propel her to the presidency on their own. Landeta’s site is done in a more minimalist manner than Marks’. Its simple, straightforward organization – like her dimples – may remind voters of Rebecca Taber.
Katrina Landeta plans to capitalize on voters’ cries for “One More Year of Taberesque Dimples!”
Marks and Landeta have created informative sites, but Rich Tao’s easily takes the cake for most impressive. The home page offers five video testimonials, each from a Yalie representing a different segment of campus. There’s Adrian Latortue, Tao’s varsity fencer roommate who serves as co-moderator of the Asian American Student Alliance (anyone know if a non-Asian – Adrian is African-American – has held that post before?), who talks about Tao’s “personality and passion.” Then there’s senior Shruti Gupta, who’s worked with Rich on diversity issues – she’s active in the Coalition for Campus Unity and Yale’s Minority Advisory Committee. Then comes freshman Sam Schoenburg, an active member of Yale’s political scene who’s lead Yale for Obama canvasses and phonebanks, who recalls the time Rich came by his room in the beginning of the year as a YCC representative to ask what issues were important to him. And so the videos go on. Just like Jon Wu did in “Yes Wu Can,” Tao has assembled a diverse group of students – young, old, black, white – who all have decided to endorse him based on their experience with him in different settings. Each testimonial ends with the endorser saying something to the tune of, “I’m voting for Rich Tao on April 14,” followed by that awesome opening riff from The Beatles’ “Come Together.”
The parallels between Wu and Tao go a step further. Just as “Yes Wu Can” established Wu as the Obama of his race, Tao’s website has done the same in his. Tao’s “Come Together” is arguably a better choice for a theme song than Obama’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” given Yale’s demographics. Tao’s site’s red, white and blue theme just feels a bit more presidential than the neon green thing Marks has going on. Plus, the fact that Tao bought www.richardtao.com instead of using freewebs.com’s hosting service as Marks and Landeta did means visitors don’t have to filter through ads to browse the site, although I can’t say I’m not interested to “Meet hot single girls waiting for you in Danbury, CT” as an ad on Landeta’s site encouraged me to do earlier today.
All three sites offer some interesting bio information – Katrina always wishes at 11:11…OMG ME TOO!! – but the hidden gem of these three sites is the picture of a scrawny high school Rich Tao rockin a Troy basketball tee.
“Troy stand up!” says an enthusiastic Rich Tao.
11 responses so far ↓
1 Anonymous // Apr 13, 2008 at 9:53 pm
what do you think the effect of facebook groups will be in this election? rich tao has the most members out of any presidential candidate!
2 anonynous // Apr 15, 2008 at 3:49 am
Harrison’s website sucks. He should have stuck with facebook and posters. Sorry.
3 Agreed // Apr 15, 2008 at 4:18 pm
It’s also quite misogynistic that you talk about features and experience for the websites of the male candidates but when you discuss the one female, you talk about her attractive smile. Yes, her dimples are beautiful but there’s a lot more to her than that.
Landeta’s website features a Qualifications - http://www.freewebs.com/votekatrina/qualifications.htm - page that is unmatched.
4 lol // Apr 15, 2008 at 4:53 pm
katrina’s qualifications? are you kidding me? that looks more like the sort of toolish breadth-over-depth, resume-padding sort of thing we DON’T want in a ycc president.
5 Anonymous // Apr 15, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I don’t know about you, but I definitely want a YCC President who has experience in activities outside of the YCC - not someone who does “just YCC” like those other guys. They’ll only maintain the status quo!
6 dimples // Apr 15, 2008 at 7:41 pm
look, katrina is incredibly qualified. being president of kasama is huge and she’s done great stuff on ycc. but her dimples set her apart from the competition, so why shouldn’t he talk about them?
7 Anonymous // Apr 15, 2008 at 8:02 pm
It’s amazing how biased in general YDN has been in favor of Tao. You have even gone to the extent of even paralleling Tao and Wu. Jon Wu is brimming with charisma whereas Tao is, to put it nicely, quite pale in comparison. How can there even be a comparison between the two. I was in a class with Tao and he didn’t strike me as too bright. I wonder how he’ll fare as YCC president, if he is elected. Before reading the YDN I thought the race was between Marks and Landeta, but you guys are making it look as if Tao is the front runner. Also Landeta is not being given enough credit for all the things that she has done. She is an extremely involved person, so much so that I think people are jealous of her and want to brush her genuine commitment to various organizations off as resume padding. Point to note:
Landeta was at least popular enough to be elected the president of the Filipino Students organization whereas Tao lost in the presidential elections for the Chinese American Students Association.
8 Anonymous // Apr 15, 2008 at 10:29 pm
you have got to be kidding me. 1) i don’t know which class you were in with rich tao, but he probably did better than you did. this kid is one of the smartest students at yale. 2) you can’t possibly compare casa and kasama, where casa probably has close to 200 members, kasama probably has less than 30. 3) rich tao has the ydn endorsement, not katrina or harrison. he also has more endorsements than either of the two other candidates. please, don’t hate.
9 Anonymous // Apr 16, 2008 at 10:22 am
I also had a class with Rich. He is smart, yes, but he also clearly didn’t do the reading. Really, he just didn’t strike me as very sincere. I want a YCC president who’s not just smart, but also willing to do the work. And I’m not about to elect someone I don’t really trust.
10 lol // Apr 16, 2008 at 12:35 pm
to those trying to hate on rich…
you all are fools - six out of the seven endorsements so far (including dwight hall and the ydn) speak for themselves
also, he probably didn’t do the reading because he was trying to work on your behalf for things like financial aid
11 anonymous // Apr 16, 2008 at 8:16 pm
there are many reasons rich lost the casa presidential elections. if 200 casa people can’t trust him, how can we expect 5,000 yalies to?
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