At 7:59 p.m. on the first Sunday of spring quarter – just seconds before campaigning for the A.S. general election officially began – Price Center and Student Center were abuzz with nervous activity. Students from competing slates eyed each other politely but uncomfortably, all poised to seize the prime poster real estate on the high balconies. By 8:01 p.m., nearly all free wall space was brightly draped in either pink or green.

It’s amazing what the A.S. promotional machine can do when it puts its heart into it. And it’s a shame that this zeal for advertising seems to die with the elections.

It’s no secret that UCSD students are not nearly as involved as they might be. During the most recent election, candidates bemoaned the limited attendance at athletic events and the poor turnout at TGIOs and Nooners. Last week, the A.S.-planned May Ball was sacked when only 12 tickets were sold. Where were the ceiling-to-floor posters for these events?

There’s a reason Bear Gardens are successful, beyond the general attractiveness of beer: Price Center is plastered with Bear Garden posters a week in advance. Similarly, a tremendous campuswide effort goes into bedecking the university with blue and gold for Spirit Night, which usually produces the largest, most energetic crowds of the entire year (as players for both UCSD basketball teams will attest).

E-mail flyers, the old standby of A.S. advertising, are too easy to forget or ignore. Facebook-based campaigns are limited to Facebook users (and you have to be invited, to boot). Posters are effective, but only on the grand, wall-to-wall scale that we see almost exclusively during student elections. So where are they for the rest of the year?

The A.S. Council certainly knows how to run a promotion campaign when it wants to – and it should want to more often.