Voting in the ASUO Primary Elections began 4 minutes ago.

With all the noise about grievances, special elections, election dates being changed, I’ll be surprised if students even vote at all. And on top of that, the ballot is extremely confusing on Duckweb. It’s hard to know which box coincides with which candidate…but Florida in the year 2000 demonstrated that that can work in some peoples’ advantage.

Anyways, as students apathetically concerned with what happens on campus, I encourage you to vote. Proceed with caution down the ballot.

A ruling has just come down that the Oregon Action Team will no longer be allowed to sell pizza on campus to promote their campaign. The OAT has been selling pizza for a measly 25 cents per slice for the last week or so, but this is apparently a violation of the Oregon Administrative Rules. Sam Dotters-Katz, the ASUO Exec candidate for the OAT, said that grievances have yet again been filed against them. (Drink!)

This decision comes directly after another ruling that prohibits the Oregon Action Team from wearing their campaign t-shirts on the same day that any of their advertisements appear in the Daily Emerald. It’s clear that the OAT’s political opponents are throwing out all the stops to keep them out of office, but why did they have to go and put the pizza in the crossfire?

“We’re just trying to hook up students with cheap pizza, and some haters are trying to shut us down,” said Dotters-Katz.

Exactly. The perpetrators of this deed must seriously ask themselves what sort of monsters they have become if they’re willing to kill student access to 25 cent pizza in the name of politics. For shame, sirs. For shame!

Also, the Rock the Yellow campaign would do much better to spend their political capital trying to boot Thunderlove from the ballot. He is the real threat - a dark horse candidate just waiting to swoop in and steal the elections.

The Con Court has made a ruling and denied a motion for reconsideration that sets the precedent that ASUO candidates cannot advertisement with, specifically, the Oregon Daily Emerald, and by default, the Oregon Commentator.

A motion of clarification filed by Tony Mecum brings into question Election Rule 6-12, which states:

that no candidate “shall employ, for any purpose relating to such election or ballot measure, any University facility or resource to which other electors do not have equal access.” Election Rule 6-12.A.vi defines “University facilities and resources” as including “[p]ublications produced with University and/or student funds.”

Executive candidates Sam Dotters-Katz and Johnny Delashaw signed a contract with the Oregon Daily Emerald to run 10 half-page ads during this week and next week. Con Court ruled this breaks rule 6-12 because the Emerald can choose to not negotiate with a advertiser.

The Oregon Daily Emerald newspaper is a publication produced with student funds and as an independent paper has the right to run only the ads it wishes to, making it not necessarily accessible to all electorates. Therefore Election Rule 6.12 bars any electorates from employing the Oregon Daily Emerald newspaper.

A footnote in the opinion says:

This is just an interpretation of the Election Rule 6.12, not a determination of the validity of said rule.

This is absurd. First of all, ASUO President Emily McLain’s campaign ran an ad in the Emerald last year. Second of all, candidates have always ran ads in both the Emerald and the Oregon Commentator. We have several examples of this. Finally, both publications have advertising policies that clearly state both publications will not deny an advertiser based on political reasons, only if said advertisement is deemed offensive. (Actually, in the OC, pretty much anything goes as long as we get our dough.)

This is a preposterous precedent that the Con Court has set. It will deliberately take away much needed revenue from two students groups, both this year and possibly in the future unless this gets cleaned up.

CORRECTION: I originally said that Mecum filed a grievance. Mecum, a member of the Oregon Action Team, actually filed a motion of clarification.

The Oregon Commentator staff is hard at work on our ASUO Elections Issue. It will be distributed next Tuesday, the first day of voting.

Voting is taking place today and tomorrow on Duckweb for the amendment changes put forth by the Executive that would add two Senate seats [see below]. If passed, students have until the end of Friday to file papers to run for those spots in next week’s election. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that opening up filing for an position five days before an election is not standard government protocol. What would you expect, however, from an administration that has shown it knows how to take advantage of setting the agenda for its own benefit. For some reason, voting for next week’s election now starts on Tuesday, not the normal Monday start.

We at the Commentator wouldn’t give a hoot if it wasn’t for the fact we are trying to put together the next issue, which will have the most extensive voters guide on campus, a caring service to University students from Sudsy. It’s a little hard, however, to do so when we are not sure of all the candidates.

Luckily, Marty Leopard, General Manager of Western Oregon Web Press, Inc, was nice enough to pencil us into their busy printing schedule on Monday, so that we have the week-end to finish things up. Cheers, Marty!

The ASUO Special Elections will be this Wednesday and Thursday. Voting will take place on Duckweb. Here is Con Court’s per curium opinion on the proposed ballot measure, here is the ballot measure, and here is the OC’s Special Elections Issue, which still has about half of the 1,500 run on stands, damnit.

In other news, Con Court has dismissed without prejudice the grievance against ASUO President Emily McLain and Vice President Chii-San SunOwen. (more…)

The Commentator received a letter to the editor today from University student Aaron Polk. It’ll be in the next issue, but I thought it would be timely to post it on the blog:

Dear Editor,

When I opened up my Facebook today, the first thing I noticed was an event invitation to an Obama rally this Friday. An even bigger surprise was that Obama himself was coming. To be honest, I was glad to see that he was coming because I saw it as an opportunity to protest and show him that not all young students are naive enough to fall for his charismatic speeches. But that enthusiasm didn’t last for too long when I found out that the ASUO was sponsoring this event.

(more…)

The following is the document sent to Sen. Lauren Zavrel, chair of the Personnel Committee, by Derek Nix about the confrontations between Nix and Sen. Nate Gulley, which led to Nix resigning from his post as Senate Administrative Assistant. (more…)

I got a call today while working in the ASUO from a member of the Barack Obama campaign saying that Obama is planning on coming to Eugene on Friday, and they need to find a 10,000 plus occupant arena. I informed them that there would not be many students on campus at this time, at which point he responded, saying, “Yes, President Frohnmayer just informed me of that.” Of course you talked to the president of our university before little ol’ me. I don’t know if this is all for real. It might have been a hallucination caused by pulling an all-nighter in the library, taking too much aderall and the disillusionment caused by working in the ASUO. Maybe it was a premonition from God that the Messiah is coming. I will keep you posted.

Update: Word is 90% sure that Obama will be at Mac Court at 8:30pm on Friday March 21st! But this isn’t official. I am just trying to share my vision with the world. I hope no one is freaking out about this. 

Update 2: Just found a bit of confirmation for you all that my premonition about this might just in fact be true. KMTR commented on their website regarding the visit saying that is was for sure the he would in Portland on Friday and possibly Eugene.

Update 3: The Register Guard has confirmed that Obama will hold an event Friday at Mac Court. For the record, I scooped them all. It’s just too bad it’s Obama and not my man McCain.

Up late doing a paper due later today, I naturally am wasting my time online and checking the OC and ODE. In the Daily Emerald today (man, I am up way too late for this…) an article is featured about the Ethnic Studies departmentalization resolution that was almost presented to Senate last night. I saw the person that was going to present the resolution. At the time, I didn’t know that it was ASUO Executive Candidate Sam Dotters-Katz…anyways, I was excited for it to happen. Then he disappeared from the meeting.

I stepped out into the hall about an hour later, and I found Dotters-Katz essentially being harpooned by Jennifer Lleras, Kari Herinckx, and Oscar Guerra about the Ethnic Studies issue and race relations. Having dealt with Ethnic Studies majors off and on for the past two years, I can tell you that listening to any Ethnic Studies major is excruciatingly frustrating. I actually went BACK into Senate instead of listening to them talk.

Anyways, the article in the ODE quotes Oscar Guerra as saying that Dotters-Katz was making the resolution to benefit his ASUO Exec bid. True or not, I like how Take Back Campus is just getting people involved and this resolution is a political move. I really don’t see any difference in the two, except that putting a resolution before Senate actually is doing something instead of just bitching for two hours and calling it good.

But I suppose the real difference is because Dotters-Katz is white, so anything he does must be a political move. And Take Back Campus was organized by more “people of color”, so it cannot be related to elections in any way.

A grievance was filed yesterday against ASUO President Emily McLain and Vice President Chii-San SunOwen by University freshman Caroline Beranek for non-fulfillment of duties. The grievance requests the two be removed from office. From today’s Emerald story:

Three elections board members were confirmed by the Senate on Jan. 23 and one was confirmed on Feb. 20, 2008. The ASUO constitution states that all members must be confirmed by November 1 of each academic year. […]

 

“Some of the issues were brought up months and months ago, so I’m really confused why this grievance is being brought up several months after the fact,” McLain said. “I’m confused as to why a student who wasn’t even here is bringing this up. She was a senior in high school in May.” […]

 

Last year, then-Senate President Sara Hamilton was removed from Senate by a grievance alleging non-fulfillment of duties. The court ruled it had no other choice.

Derek Nix, campaign manager for the Oregon Action Team slate and candidate for a PFC Senate seat, has resigned from his position as Student Senate Administrative Assistant. In his resignation letter, sent out Monday morning and acquired via a public record’s request, Nix said verbal conduct in the workplace that may be interpreted “to cause professional harm to my position in the ASUO and worse, to my personal safety,” led to his resignation effective immediately.

Over the last two weeks, I have been subject to repeated workplace harassment that threatened me with my job, the details of which have been reported to the Personnel Committee, but it culminated Thursday when Senator Gulley threatened me with physical injury. Senator Gulley had and has no evidence to support his slanderous accusations at Wednesday night’s Senate meeting.

(more…)

Take Back the Campus was what it was. I’m a little embarrassed at my own ignorance of the situation; I thought it would be more of an open forum. Silly me. It was obvious that a lot of work went into this. But just because one works hard doesn’t mean the results will be good. There were numerous petitions made, cameras, Zane Kesey was there, many (so many!) student presenters and the rest of the works. Yet, not much was accomplished with all these resources.

There were about 100 students who attended. I figure at least half were ASUO insiders and about half of the rest left half-way through. Some of the speakers were good, some were not. Depending upon the audience, some ideas were good and some were not. All together the forum informed maybe 25 students about issues that have been in the newspapers for weeks and months.

When it was all said and done, there was one dissenting voice. When the presentations were over and it opened up to “an open forum,” Ryan McCarrel asked to use the podium. In the past few weeks, he has been creating discussion via e-mails with political science students about apathy. He had a prepared statement, which he was not allowed to finish, about the need for change. Now imagine the irony of it all. On the chalk board “MAKE CHANGE” was written huge and “APATHY” with a slash through it was there too. McCarrel spoke about the problem of widespread apathy within the student body, and the desperate need for a change to better the student body as a whole. Sen. Nate Gulley yelled out “bullshit”. Sen. Patrick Boye interrupted to call out the Oregon Commentator (not sure why; we hadn’t said anything). It was obvious that those in charge did not want to have a discussion about change or apathy. They wanted to finish their job and go home.

Here is the speech that McCarrel didn’t get to finish. (more…)

Take Back Campus was clearly just a thinly-veiled front for next year’s potential Executive candidates, shamelessly backed by the current ASUO Executive. Did anyone else think it was ridiculous for Take Back Campus to be substitutable for a Programs Council Meeting (that all programs MUST attend)?

It’s obvious that the conspirators organizers of Take Back Campus are not going to be able to accomplish most of the issues they railed against (which were as far and between as the Wrestling team cut, a police force on campus, and the Holy Cow). The only possible reason, then, for them to address ALL those hot topic issues is that they were trying to get as wide of a range of potential VOTERS in the same place, and for those VOTERS to see the faces of the potential Executives as candidates that will ‘take action’ somehow.

(more…)

There are many problems some of my friends and I have with the Pit Crew. I think it’s a shotty sports fan group for the most part. There will be a commentary about this in the OC’s next issue, next week, but for now, read this article from SI.com and decide if the Pit Crew is a good use of student funds (granted they only get a few hundred dollars, but still). I really hope the athletic department discontinues the Pit Crew section in the new arena.

Boy, oh, boy, do I love election season.

You know why? Because people start bitching. And if they have been bitching, they start bitching LOUDER. Diego Hernandez starts writing more in the Emerald with empty accusations of racism. People actually respond. Other people start forming ‘Take Back the Campus’ coalitions that address issues that aren’t even affected by student opinion. Grievances go up by 100% (because no one files grievances during the rest of the year). And the rest of the student population actually pays attention to the ASUO.

Stay tuned, shitstorm to follow in the next couple weeks. :-)