Our favorite line in the entire newspaper Friday morning was “Event Organized by Student Group.”

As we reach the end of another cycle of elections and the candidates who have chosen the path of ugly negative campaigns have started to reach to the depths of desperation to try and soil the reputations of their opponents, it is great to see Mars Area High School students organize and conduct a civil and respectful debate.

Even school board positions have become hotly contested in recent years, and the lessons these students are learning now may help them and their communities encourage more and better candidates and see these elections as a way to improve communities rather than destroy them.

We are thrilled that the candidates involved in this debate showed the student organizers that there are positive ways to campaign and to establish yourself as worthy of their vote as opposed to the low-life method of attacking the opponent.

Momma said, “If you don’t have something positive to say, it is better to say nothing at all.”

In political vernacular that should equate to if you have nothing you can say positive about yourself, don’t bother trying to win by making your opponent look worse.

Yes, we have had too many recent elections, including national ones, where we are deciding between the lesser of two bad choices.

The real shame though is when candidates have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fling dirt on the opposition, and they fail to give us any positive thing about themselves. Simply vote for them because they haven’t done as many bad things that they think the opponent may have done.

Most likely when the polls close on Election Day, the “Negative Nancys” will have lost again. They will have wasted lots of money on bigger and better signs, which can be used for a nice pep rally bonfire at the next football game, but they won’t have improved the community or even their hopes for a better result in their next campaign, which is as sure to happen as that God made little green apples.

We believe it is important for parents to always remember and be careful what they do because kids are watching.

Let’s hope when it comes to election campaigns they are watching with one eye on the positive things that can come from even losing a good campaign run on positives and not only seeing the ugliness and desperation of candidates with nothing to offer but begging for votes for a campaign without any merit.

Thank you to the candidates who have stayed above the mud pit level and run your own campaign about yourself, and a bigger thanks to the students and their instructors who may have a bigger impact on the election than any negative flyer tossed into mailboxes on the way to the shredder.

—RV