NOTE: due to the pathetic excuse of writing above…I felt it was necessary to help you interpret what I say. In fact, it seems like most of the OC staff has a problem understanding simple concepts. They only see it through their mentally damaged “life lense.”

Back in the olden days (1984) a few of us at SOU (it was SOSC back then) questioned the wisdom of funding the Oregon Student Lobby. It ignited the same sort of poopy storm I see churning up there today. Some believe in the collectivist approach and really like funding groups to represent them but others, the thinkers, see these groups as too broadly focused to be effective or in many cases actually unrepresentative of their own views. The other problem is giving cash to a group that is nothing more than amatuers dabbling in politics. In the end the status quo was maintained but it got some people thinking about those damn fees.

Well the fees are still around supporting most every thing imaginable and some things not even imaginable. It pains the heart. The question and problem is how do tear down something so entrenched in four years and while going to school? That’s a tough one. Maybe get some of that cash for a group that turns around and sues the University to stop collecting the fees like union dues? Maybe show the legislature how this money is being pissed away on a daily basis? Maybe get enough like minded students elected to scuttle the whole scheme? Crap, if some of those senators didn’t even know about the student senate and what it did how hard could it be?

Fees are a cash cow that will always attract the vultures and there will always be plenty of vultures floating around a university waiting for that next government job to open up at the welfare office (that’s what it’s for, the welfare of the employees, not the people) or the post office. While they wait the easy scavenging off student fees is too hard to resist and their like minded kindred spirits weasel them into the job. How depressing.

As they say, it will take years and cost millions of lives but what the hell you guys seem up to it. Good luck.

Still, Wilsey said he hadn’t seen OSPIRG “at all” on campus, and committee member Mei Li Yu said she had never heard of OSPIRG before last week. Committee member Tri Vo said he “had no idea of OSPIRG.”

Sen. Lauren Zavrel chided the committee later: “Obviously, even though your office is right across the hall from our office, apparently we don’t see the big OSPIRG sign.”

Zavrel said that before she was a senator, she didn’t know about the Senate or the PFC.

So we have a group not earning its funding, PFC members who have no idea about arguably the most disputed use of students funds in I-fee history and an ASUO senator who had no clue that there was a ASUO Senate until she joined it. What the … !?! Even funnier (sadder?), Li Yu is the PFC Tag for all the contracts, which includes OSPIRG, according to the 08-09 PFC Budget Process packet. Of course, OSPIRG doesn’t need help from a PFC member while creating its budget proposal, the group has people up in Portland to tell them how to do that.

When the hearing re-opened later in the night:

Meyers questioned why, after so many years, so many people dislike OSPIRG and mentioned negative articles in the Oregon Commentator.

ASUO President McLain, who had attended the entire hearing, interrupted. “I think we are verging very closely on a breach of viewpoint neutrality,” she said, accusing Meyers of questioning “how they are perceived politically.”

Meyers shouted back and McLain yelled over him, “It is a legal issue, and I think we are very close to the line.”

“My point is OSPIRG is telling us that they are going to great lengths to explain themselves” but still have many detractors, Meyers said.

“I think we are terribly off the point,” ASUO Accountant Lynn Giordano said. “Let’s get back to finances.”

Wilsey said he saw no reason why the committee wouldn’t follow the Executive’s recommended budget, saying the charges against OSPIRG were “ambiguous.”

The Daily Emerald’s poll software also doesn’t appear to prevent people from the same IP address from voting multiple times. At the very least, if it ignores multiple votes from the same IP, it does so quietly.