Representing students.
I love it when it’s “everyday students” who start railing against the ASUO, and not those who are watching their every move.
As an addendum to Rockne’s post below, here is the video of Amélie’s convocation speech (this is the whole convocation, her speech starts at 12:30). It is, as Rockne professed, embarrassing, and incredibly disrespectful to those who allowed her the microphone in the first place.
There is a certain level of responsibility that goes with the title of ASUO President. When you speak in public, you are speaking on behalf of more than yourself and the little office you work in. You are speaking on behalf of every incidental fee-paying student at the University of Oregon.
This poses a considerable problem when you are charged with making a speech to introduce a batch of around 4,000 brand new students to the University. As ASUO President, you have not made any headway in trying to deduce how students feel about any particular issue — mostly because students are not informed about most things happening on campus. It is for this reason that most convocation speeches (at least in the last few years) by ASUO Presidents have been largely apolitical, for fear of misrepresenting student views and being disrespectful to students in the process.
It becomes much harder when you decide to throw all of your responsibility out the window and flat out lie to those sitting before you. Amélie’s description of the riot on September 25th — that the Eugene Police Department started taking action because of one person throwing one beer bottle at one cop car — is completely absurd. The crowd was asked to disperse because they were blocking traffic and being loud, and when they did not disperse, actions were taken. And then, in a stunning display of putting the cart before the horse, she goes on to talk about arming the Department of Public Safety. What? DPS was nowhere near the incident, as it was not in their jurisdiction, and the proposals for DPS do not include arming them — at least not at the moment.
Her criticisms of President Lariviere’s New Partnership proposal were just as absurd, if not more. I’m not even going to address this one, because you can all read the white paper and see for yourself just how misinformed she is. I wonder if she’s even read it yet.
The worst part about all of this is the 4,000 freshmen who believed every single word she said. I have encountered those people, and no matter how many letters run in the Ol’ Dirty Emerald, there is going to be a large group of people who believe what she says and continue to do so throughout the year.
If any University undergraduates are reading this, please do your part to get informed about issues on campus. Especially when it comes to the ASUO, titles are meaningless. Just because a president says it, doesn’t mean it’s always true.
Then again, just because a managing editor says it, doesn’t mean it’s always true either.
I just threw up in my mouth, an OSPIRG reference AND an OSA reference. Where was the OSCC reference too?
This is why liberals are stupid: disproportionate responses, meddling in things that students know nothing of and trying to equate “activism” with sitting in at Johnson Hall, nearly fifty years ago.
She is right that the New (old) Partnership is a scam . Would students really want UO to emulate the changes made to OHSU (privatization)….by Goldschmidt ? OHSU has real estate related biz in Florida ! UO needs greater oversight not less. This is all about that land east of campus. The UO prez thinks he is a real estate developer…..aspires to create a branded bonded public private living learning smart neighborhood. It is unfortunate that the current ASUO president *understands far more about the dangers of the autonomy proposal than students or the media clowns*. There is no one to hear her warnings. Oh well………it is over and UO is the national academic joke/sweatshop and sports theme park Fraudmayer always wanted. So how soon will those new football office buildings be built by the Cas center ? It better get started soon. More sports.
Lariviere: “After you’ve registered to vote, you’ll know why you’re voting”
Pretty artful dig, I think.
Wow… Incredible. The students will actually remember this speech because they were so annoyed by it. She has done nothing. Hiring a position takes ten minutes. She is just trying to become the liberal icon that brought back OSPIRG, even though many a good liberal helped bring that piece of trash down.
Shame, shame, shame. I wish we had Alex in there. Would not be this big of a joke.