Words by secret subeditor*
Urban Dictionary defines a ‘Wank Word’ as
In the UK and the Commonwealth, a strongly derogatory and deliberately vulgar term for a buzzword, signifying that it is worthless and meaningless jargon. Wankwords may be short phrases as well as single words. The word is most often used of corporate, official, or academic language.
Now, we’re not saying that our candidates for student elections are throwing around worthless and meaningless jargon, but there are some words that appear more than others. So for a bit of fun, we’ve run all the candidate statements for student elections through a macro on MS Word that lists the frequency of each word throughout the collective sum of candidate statements. And yes, we have most definitely taken inspiration from Rob Lawry’s Buzzword PSA from last year.
Without further ado, here are the top 12 wank words for 2017.
1. Student(s)
Clocking in at 495 mentions, you better believe that our candidates are at least somewhat aware that these elections are for students (or student).
2. We/Our
249 mentions. Inclusive language is proven to help candidates win positions during times of crisis. Hopefully people don’t think there’s a crisis in student media…
3. University/Campus
276 Mentions. Thankfully, candidates are aware that this is happening at the University of Adelaide, and not 16km away for a certain Northern-Suburbs council.
3. Your
With 244 mentions, candidates are excited about talking directly to the voter about their unibar or their campus culture or their NUS representation or their student rorts etc.
5. SRC
119 mentions. Clearly the SRC is more important than the union (only clocking in at a pathetic 66 mentions).
6. More
84 mentions. Millennials in this day and age want everything and they want it now! At least we can rest tight knowing that most of our candidates are willing to facilitate it.
7. Representative
70 mentions. Not sure about this one. I think most candidates got confused and think that they’re running for the House of Reps. Hard to say tbh.
=8. Culture
=57 mentions. The big C-word on campus. While none of the candidates really explain what they mean by ‘culture’, we can only assume that it has something to do with drinking beers?
=8. Fight
57 mentions. With an equal amount as culture, perhaps we read this wrong. Were the candidates actually saying that they were going to fight campus culture?
10. Experience
54 mentions. Not that we checked, but we’re certain that most of these mentions had to do with the perceived lack thereof we had before entering this role.
11. Better
41 mentions. Because saying you’re going to make the university experience ‘worse’ will never get you votes.
12. Change
38 mentions. Obama won the presidency in ’08 predicated on a promise of change. Student elections are equally as important as a US election and we don’t care what anyone else has to say about it.
#UAVotes
*actually Tom Haskell
On Dit 