ASUO Elections Achieve New Heights of Absurdity
We’re entering uncharted territory here, folks. Beyond thunderdome, if you will. The Oregon Action Team exec ticket has been kicked off the ballot, with the rest of its slate also under the axe. The OAT is threatening legal action. ASUO Exec Sam Dotters-Katz has issued a statement calling the election board’s ruling “one of the most reprehensible and shameful acts I have witnessed at the ASUO,” although he said he would not try to intervene.
All in all, it’s a complete disaster. Either the OAT is guilty of bribing volunteers with alcohol, or their opponents sandbagged them with false accusations. It’s a lose-lose situation for the student body either way.
This is why the Oregon Commentator did not endorse any of the executive tickets. I know that both campaigns have been doing these shady things all along. The problem is I don’t know which one to distrust more.
For example, the following is from the ODE article on yesterday’s exec debates:
“I had the pleasure of going to a conference funded by student fees,” Haley said. She said she used the conference as an opportunity to lobby legislators on behalf of students, but that, “Every morning at 6 a.m., Emma was meeting with two people from the ASUO planning her campaign.”
Kallaway then snapped back, “At six in the morning, I’m pretty sure that you were sleeping and I was being more educated about the ASUO.”
After the debate, Kallaway said she had been meeting with ASUO alumni who did not want to be identified. She said it was “a privilege to see old perspectives” on a variety of issues, and the way she spent her time in Washington D.C. indicated her ability to get the maximum use out of available resources.
Do you know what they’re talking about? It’s called Fight Club. The progressive bloc in the ASUO have their own Mystic Society of No Homers to organize their campaigns and get “the right people” in office. Most everybody around the ASUO knows about it, but it’s hard to get anyone on the record because … well, you know the first rule of fight club.
But this is the kind of atmosphere that pervades the entire ASUO on both sides of the spectrum; the conservatives have their little Karl Roves as well. It’s all insider politics, backroom deals and smoke and mirrors, and it’s disgusting.
Most people expected the Commentator to support the OAT. We did last year, and I don’t regret that. But besides opposing OSPIRG and paying lip-service to lowering the I-fee, it’s hard to see how this year’s Oregon Action Team slate qualifies as particularly conservative. As the ODE noted, their idea to increase football tickets is unrealistic, especially in an economic crunch. The rest of their platform consists of maintaining and/or expanding services. How this will lower the I-fee is beyond me. The OAT seemed more concerned with fostering an image and winning seats than promoting fiscal responsibility.
So there you have it: Stuck with the choice of the “ASUO tested, Fight Club approved” candidates or a faux-conservative slate full of mostly lackluster people and ideas, we chose neither. (Well, actually we chose “Deez Nuts.”) No one on the Commentator staff was interested in endorsing any of the exec tickets. The students of the University of Oregon deserve an open and transparent government, not a bunch of self-serving twits.
I don’t give the benefit of the doubt to any ruling coming from the elections board, and their ruling once again seems completely arbitrary and nonsensical. However, I have trouble being outraged because, frankly, we were doomed from the start.
The cherry on top of all this is 80 percent of students could care less.
(Oh, P.S. Emma and Getachew voiced conditional support for bringing OSPIRG back next year, so if Michelle and Ted are completely off the ballot, you can expect to see those money-grubbing clowns again come budget season.)
