According to a Tomcat article published in the Emerald on Friday, the ASUO Elections board — the same that threatened the Commentator with punishment for Cpt. Peter Freedom Lesiak’s poster – decided against doing so late last Thursday night “unless a student formally files a complaint against him.”

Of course, any student filing a complaint against Lesiak would have to take into consideration that all of the other presidential candidates have had posters on this website as well. Twice. Since Lesiak did not post his flyers under his own volition, filing a complaint against Lesiak would require filing a complaint against all the other candidates as well.

Of course, the real lesson here is that the ASUO Elections Rules have some pretty asinine provisions. Coupled with vague language, the rules that punish candidates for separate entities actions is fucking stupid. Glad to hear the ASUO Elections Board came to their senses.

A new issue of the Oregon Quarterly is out, most notably with an article by Managing Editor Ross West about the Oregon Commentator’s By the Barrel: 25 Years of the Oregon Commentator.

There’s some great quotes in there, and overall the article is pretty positive. You can check out the digital issue of the Oregon Quarterly here or pick it up in person at the Duckstore.

I should take this time to remind you that By the Barrel: 25 Years of the Oregon Commentator is still only $10.

When Haiti was struck by a catastrophic earthquake killing over 200,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless a number of  students took action. Many students planned fundraisers, some threw Haiti donation parties and many others donated individually.

Three students in particular wanted to take action and did not want to wait. Jon Kam, Corey Smith and David Zahn took to the corner of 13th and Kincaid with a bucket and hope.The three stood on the corner with their bucket in place and begun asking students for a donations to the American Red Cross. Many questioned their intents and thought they were trying to scam students. The Red Cross recognized their efforts as official and sincere, and applauded their work.

Over a two day period the three students were able to gather $1,500 merely asking students for donations. Now Kam is looking to bring the Red Cross to the UO students. Their first meeting took place last Wednesday and he group  has already begun planning future events. Such events include a smoke detector distribution program for impoverished neighborhoods in Eugene and a Civil War fundraiser in May.

If you would like to learn more about participating in events  or  joining the upcoming student group follow their twitter at rceverydayhero.

(We apologize for the delay for the posters. Proper Facebook clearance was needed.)

Looks like the ASUO Elections season is underway! Here’s some sweet posters!

In what was a meeting that could have put any insomniac to sleep, the ASUO was able to get through more actual business than they have in recent weeks. 

• UO Forensics received funding for their end of the year tournaments. 
• HKSA received funding for their upcoming Hong Kong Appreciation night event. The menu looks fantastic by the way, I will be attending based on that fact alone. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the ASUO ticketing office. 
• The Take Back The Tap resolution was passed and will be voted on by the rules committee next senate meeting. 
• The EMU board came in to to have it’s budget passed. It will cost 4.8 million dollars next year of the ASUO’s budget to maintain the EMU this is up $225,000 from last year’s budget. 
• Included in the EMU’s budget will be the Bike Loan Program which will receive permanent funding for the first time ever. If you are unfamiliar with the Bike Loan Program it is a program that allows students to rent bikes for a small fee, I believe it is a $60 deposit. Pretty much it’s a free bike for the term if you do not break it or lose it. Great program overall, if you don’t have bike next year I strongly urge you to take part in this program. 
• PFC came in to present their spending model which was approved. The ASUO lowered the total budgets of the 110 programs by .81%. Fiscal conservatives rejoice! That means they will not have to have repeat PFC sessions to reevaluate budgets, AKA we still have a stripper pole line item. Which will be used in our eventual long term goal of sending a OC member to the Olympics. 

Overall it was a tame meeting. No out bursts, one silly hat, and a great job the PFC.

There was a letter to the editor in Monday’s Emerald signed by members of the Climate Justice League (Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Heart!) denouncing the ACFC’s recent decision not to fund OSPIRG. In part, the letter said:

“Although OSPIRG provided all of the materials and information the committee asked for, ACFC never clearly articulated a reason to not fund OSPIRG, except a vague sense of uncertainty.”

Of course, those who have read anything about the ACFC’s decision understand that the ACFC clearly outlined why they decided not to fund OSPIRG. Even more surprising is that many of the signers of the letter — including Sen. Jeremy Blanchard — attended the meeting and heard the ACFC’s reasons in person. A response was printed yesterday, signed by ASUO Senate President Nick Gower and Sen. Demic Tipitino (in addition to many others, including myself) that said:

“The problems with OSPIRG were clearly articulated, and they have been for years. OSPIRG sends student money off campus to pay non-students to lobby for issues that have little relation to the University of Oregon campus. Additionally, OSPIRG’s system is structured in a manner that partial funding would make the organization ineffective and an even greater waste of student dollars.”

Do the Planeteers need this outlined again? Let’s go “bulletpoints” on this one, shall we?

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Download this picture and color in University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere. Submit your colorings/drawings via email to us at ocomment@uoregon.edu or upload it and submit it in the comments section. We have 2 weeks till our next issue comes out, so get in your submissions! First Place will be a Sudsy Tee, and the others will be mystery prizes!

I’ve been invited to talk about OSPIRG on KWVA 88.1 campus radio later tonight. The downside? Robert D’Andrea will be part of the guests as well.

Tune in tonight to 88.1 or listen from iTunes at 6:30PM.

On Monday, February 15 a DPS officer responded to noise complaints and approached recorder player Misha Seymour, asking him to leave campus. Over the past three weeks or so, you might have seen Seymour on 13th Avenue or around the EMU playing a variety of music on his modest instrument. However, in light of recent noise complaints, his music will be heard no more as you stroll to class.

I always see people performing around 13th and University. Some play guitars, some sing songs, some even yell at the top of their lungs, “LTD can lick my sweaty, shaven nutsack!” I always admired the lively nature of random, voluntary performers, seeing them as an valuable addition to the University setting.

Seymour could sometimes be found around the EMU building, or even near the ASUO office. I can see how this might disturb some people. He probably would have been wiser in staying on the main sidewalks for the sake of not getting harassed or complained about. However, on the day he was asked to leave campus, he was standing on the sidewalk, innocently playing his recorder about twenty feet from the corner of 13th and University. There are no classrooms in the immediate area and, therefore, no reasonable cause for any noise complaint. It really is baffeling. That area is overflowing with the voices of students on their way class.

It’s not like he’s running up and down the hallways of Lillis, blowing off-key notes as loud as he can during classes and masturbating in the bathroom stalls. Misha Seymour should be able to play his recorder on the streets.

According to Tomcat over at the Daily Emerald, Diego Hernandez and CAER, the Coalition Against Environmental Racism, has been stamping their feet like insolent children over a recent allocation of EMU office space that didn’t go their way.

A recently vacated office space in the Survival Center was up for grabs, and both CAER and the Alliance of Happy Atheists (AHA) applied for the space. Because of a relationship with ASUO President Emma Kallaway and the Survival Center, CAER didn’t think they really had to, you know, try to get the office space:

“The difference between their applications, CAER co-director Adrien Wilkie said, was that CAER, because of encouragement from Kallaway and the Survival Center to apply for the space, assumed that the Jan. 27 meeting at which an EMU Board subcommittee met to allocate space in the building was a formality.

“Honestly, we went into this thinking we had to apply just for bureaucracy’s sake,” she said. Neither she nor her fellow co-director skipped class to attend.”

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“Let the Lord penetrate you.”

The Desert Lamp is reporting that Brother Jed, our favorite “confrontational evangelical” is making his rounds around the UA campus. You know what that means: only a few short months before the rain lets up enough to let Jed and his virgin-white suit harass students and other insane people here at the University of Oregon. Hey, it’s way more fun than Nazis, no?

Members of the ACFC listen to presenters during OSPIRG’s hearing.

Yesterday night OSPIRG went in front of the ASUO’s Athletics and Contracts Committee. OSPIRG’s members went through a presentation talking about all the “wonderful, amazing and good-hearted” things OSPIRG does. There were some particularly ridiculous moments. One Lane Community College OSPIRG member (I have no idea why they were there) said during public testimony, “If there was no OSPIRG, there’d be dead whales all over the ocean.” Immediately to my right, CJ Ciaramella had to give him a knock.

Of the people who spoke during the public testimony portion, only three of them were against funding OSPIRG’s current request–Me, Lyzi Diamond and CJ Ciaramella. In part, Diamond’s testimony quoted from a Matt Petryni opinion column that appeared in the Daily Emerald in 2008, “More than two-thirds of its ASUO stipend goes not to campus work, but to staffers in Portland, Ore.”

I also highlighted the point that the issue at hand, as it always has been with OSPIRG, is not whether they do good things. It is merely the proper use of student funding. Further, OSPIRG’s budget accounts for $103,000 to paid employees, $70,047 on non-student, non-campus employees alone. I noted that over 60% of their budget directly says that it does not go to students, and that responsible fiscal oversight by the ASUO was not possible with OSPIRG’s current funding model.

One awkward moment happened immediately after I spoke, as I saw CJ Ciaramella outside, and motioned to him. He didn’t see me, so I walked to the door to go get him. A man, probably in his 50s, stopped my as I walked by. His name is Paul Tanner and he is a student at LCC. He asked me, “Are you leaving?” To which I replied no, I was merely going to get CJ. He then told me that, “Because if you get up there and make a statement like that, you damn well better sit here and listen to what others have to say.”

At that point, I removed his hand from my shoulder and told him, “Don’t ever fucking talk to me like that again.” I got CJ, came back inside, and stopped by Tanner to reiterate how he was to speak to me. By the way, the meeting lasted about 3 hours. After about hour 2, I could no longer find Paul Tanner in the room, and he was indeed gone before the meeting ended. Thanks for staying, Paul.

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For weeks now we’ve been debating back and forth about the Pacifica Forum, and the subsequent maneuvering its protesters have done to try to make the discussion about “student safety”. It came to a head last week when the ASUO Senate Rules Committee passed a resolution that politely asked the Pacifica Forum to fuck off.

It seems that through a highly convoluted series of events, the Student Insurgent has coincidentally “intercepted” a message from Billy Rojas, which has been denied as being a fake. Even if the e-mail is real, it’s long and boring and I don’t really need to go over its contents. The best part is that the Black Tea Society has decided to call on anti-Pacifica supporters from all over the state to protest the next Pacifica meeting on the 12th because of the e-mail.

Here’s where it gets juicy. The Black Tea Society intends to bring militants to the University of Oregon campus in order to protest the Pacifica Forum. That’s right… militants.

“Militants wishing to participate in this action should arrive in front of Agate Hall on the University of Oregon campus, this Friday February 12th at 4:30pm”

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