Alright, kids. Have fun with this one (emphasis added to maximize hilarity):

Eugene police arrested a woman Friday at the Pacifica Forum meeting on campus, while others were given citations after protesters deployed a stink bomb to disrupt the meeting.

. . .

The Emerald was unable to confirm how many protesters received citations on Friday. DPS spokesperson Sgt. Adam Lillengreen declined to comment, saying the report first had to be released at its scheduled time later today. Protesters who were given citations are not allowed back onto University property for 18 months.

. . .

Black Tea Society spokesperson Damage, who declined to give his legal name out of safety concerns, refused to give names of the other protesters who received citations. Damage also said he thought six Black Tea Society members were issued citations on Friday.

In a guest commentary in the ODE, Cimmeron Gillespie railed against fiscal conservatism as a means to amplify the current funding issues of sexual abuse programs here at the UO.

Of course, this is all very well and good, if it weren’t for gems we’ve been expecting to hear from Gillespie for some time like, “The election of any group who calls for increased scrutiny of the incidental fee or ASUO funds doesn’t understand that there is already huge bureaucracy and oversight.”

The rest of Gillespie’s column goes on as a thinly veiled attack against Alex McCafferty’s presidential bid. Of course, McCafferty has been chair of the ACFC twice and Senate president, meaning he fully understands the ASUO funding process. Or rather, “he speaks with some authority.”

In a conversation with former OC publisher Guy Simmons, he told me this, “You know why this magazine–a conservative voice–is the most popular magazine on this liberal campus? Because everyone thinks governmental waste is bad. Period.”

Well, everyone except for one member of the “anarchist collective”.

Bored over this summer, the Oregon Commentator decided to have a little fun in preparation for a terrible, soul-crushing elections season. We decided that the most logical choice of action was to register the name “Student Insurgent” as a non-profit magazine in Lane county through the Oregon Secretary of State’s Corporation Division.

We’ve had it posted on craigslist in the barter section for quite some time, but have yet to receive any e-mails in response. We decided we’d put it here and get a little interest going.

As the ad says, we are open to trades or cash for the naming rights to a magazine called the “Student Insurgent” in Lane county.

What’s your best offer?

“Rage against the machine, man! Now, where’s my stipend paycheck?”

The Student Insurgent had its PFC meeting tonight, one in which they asked for a mere $23,519. Unfortunately, they had to settle for just $22,222.

There were several crucial moments in the hearing, most of which hovered around the Student Insurgent’s rather dubious delegation of their funding. The Insurgent admitted to printing only 7 issues last year (actually, they guessed because “no one could remember”. We personally think it was more like 5) on a budget of $21,427 – a whopping $3,061 an issue. They vowed to increase their production this year all the way up to 9 issues, meaning each issue for next year will have a reasonable price tag of just $2,469.

If you’d like a little comparison, the Commentator expects to produce 15 issues this year at an average cost of about $1,500 an issue.

A question was then raised about the conduct at the Anarchist Book Fair in San Francisco. Sen. Alyssa Diamond mentioned a letter from a non-Insurgent staffer that was printed in an issue of the Insurgent last Spring. In the letter, Diamond mentioned that the student had reported “Not attending the fair and that all they did was party”. Abby Bluth, an Insurgent Co-Editor noted that, “It goes against what we are to control what people are doing [at the book fair].”

(more…)

As this decade (the Twenty-oughts) comes to a close, the Commentator will inevitably examine the impact of several movements, from politics to pop culture, from the last ten years. In kind, much has happened over the last ten years to the Commentator itself, and I believe it to be important, dear readers, for you to learn about who we were at the turn of the century, if only to better understand who we are today.

Perfecting the Art

Just one month before the turn of the century, the Oregon Commentator was in some relative hot water over a front cover they had ran purporting then University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer to have died. Frohnmayer famously had a heart attack at a medical conference in Bethesda, Maryland but had escaped the ordeal relatively unharmed.

At the time, “Das Frohn” was rather upset about the cover, “Quite frankly, he was pissed off,” said then-OC editor Bill Beutler.

(more…)

The Ol’ Dirty is reporting that OSPIRG has finally been kicked out of the space in the EMU that they’ve been using since being sent packing last year. Not only that, but ASUO Executive Emma Kallaway pointed out that OSPIRG shouldn’t have been there in the first place, since they haven’t been a student group in years:

The Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group was dealt another blow Tuesday when the EMU Board of Directors delivered notice that OSPIRG’s file cabinets have to be cleared from its spot in the east side of the EMU, its professional staff can no longer use incidental fee-funded resources and a recognized student group would soon move in to share quarters with the Survival Center and the Student Insurgent.

The explanation provided was that OSPIRG is no longer a recognized student group and therefore cannot occupy space in the EMU. The inconsistency, as ASUO President Emma Kallaway noted, is that OSPIRG has not been a student group for years. Until July, the ASUO had a contract for membership in the statewide organization. No one ever bothered to mention contracted services should not have been allowed space in the EMU.

Along with OSPIRG’s illegal occupation of the EMU, it seems they’ve been using other University resources such as phone lines and computers that they had no particular right to. That, of course, hasn’t stopped them from being a bunch of ingrates:

The EMU Board says OSPIRG staffers cannot use the phones paid for by the incidental fee. OSPIRG students say they use cell phones because the land line was cut in July. The board says OSPIRG can’t use the computer provided in its former office space; OSPIRG Chair Charles Denson said it was slow anyway.

Sorry the misappropriated computer in question wasn’t up to your standards, Chuck.

The Big O is reporting that authorities have a arrested a large group of activists who were blocking a logging road near the Elliot State Forest. The action was organized by Cascadia Rising Tide and Earth First!. A lot of the activists no doubt came from the Cascadia Summer Action Camp, which was based largely out of Eugene. The activists have a website up at forestdefensenow.org (as opposed to forest defense sometime in the foreseeable future).  Besides the obvious silliness of a person sitting in a tree and crapping in a bucket, the Oregonian explains why the protest is absurd:

Earlier this week, Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky of the group Cascadia Rising Tide said the activists are trying to protect native forests that help prevent global warming by storing carbon, as well as providing habitat for northern spotted owls, marbled murrelet and salmon. The blockade was the culmination of the Round River Rendezvous, an annual gathering of Earth First and other groups, she said.

State forestry officials said surveys in 2005 and 2006 found no evidence of marbled murrelets nesting in the 79-acre timber sale site. Spotted owls live in the Elliott State Forest, and about half the 93,000-acre forest is set aside as owl habitat and cannot be logged.

Several small seasonal streams run through the sale area. A year-round stream also runs through the unit, but it does not have migratory fish runs, according to the forestry department. Buffer zones have been established near yet another stream that empties into the Umpqua River.

So what you have, in effect, is a bunch of activists locking themselves down to protest a relatively small, well-planned and conscientious logging operation. Of course, the poseur revolutionaries at the Student Insurgent will let no such facts get in the way of their environmental zeal. No compromise in defense of mother earth!

Snark aside, if y’all want to actually do something proactive for the environment, rather than play martyr, there are NGO’s out there that use these things called “science” and “money” to identify important wilderness areas, buy the property and preserve them. The biggest is perhaps the  Nature Conservancy, but there are plenty of other local ones, such as the McKenzie River Trust. Remember, kiddos, money talks just as loud, if not louder, than a stinky hippie in a tree.

In the latest issue of the Student Insurgent (at least I think it’s the latest… aside from a calendar advertising events in May at the “Eugene Free School”, I can’t find a date anywhere on this thing), noted advocates for fiscal responsibility, Joey Beats and Cimmeron Gillespie fire a devastating broadside against the Student Rec Center, admonishing the Rec Center for its profligate ways.

We couldn’t agree more! In fact, former OC Editor-in-Chief Ted Niedermeyer scooped the Insurgent on this story about two years ago (story begins on page 20). Still, it’s nice to see the Insurgent kids finally take notice of the massive misallocation of student dollars at the University of Oregon:

This problem of funding as [sic] been a constant issues [sic] for the Rec. Center, as they have gone before student government asking for more money, year after year and received in full, [sic] their requested funding… Such waste is intolerable given the national financial state and our own Fat-Katz administration’s promises of ‘fiscal responsibility’.

No doubt it’s only a matter of time before these newly minted fiscal conservatives at the Insurgent join the Oregon Commentator in demanding higher standards of accountability and less wasteful spending of student money across the board in the ASUO.

Will they reverse their support of that notorious money sink known as OSPIRG? Hope springs eternal.

Then again, one of their letters to the editor in the latest issue describes how the Insurgent gang gave some random anarchist a ride to the Bay Area in a “state-owned” van and proceeded to go “to the co-ops in Berkeley for a naked, neon good time,” so I’m not getting my hopes up.

One can only wonder if that trip was paid for by student money and, if it was, how the Insurgent staff squares that with their sudden commitment to prudent fiscal management.

[EDIT]

The next column in the Insurgent, attributed to “Greenwash Guerillas”, lambasts the U of O for it’s attempts at “greenwashing” through the use of carbon offsets. It begins with the paragraph:

Carbon offsets follow the same logic as indulgences did for the Catholic Church centuries ago. Offsetting argues that if you do something “bad” you can mitigate that by paying someone to do something “good” in your name.

Did we buy up the Insurgent with some of that blog contest money and someone just forgot to tell me, or something?

Well, campus today is all aflutter for the impending “march on Johnson Hall“. In what seems to be a deliberate attempt to rekindle past glories, the “Step Up, Oregon!” faction is going to demand that Oregon distance itself from a clothing manufacturer accused of employing sweatshop labor, breaking the law, and generally being very, very bad.

Even the ASUO is trying to get in on the action.

I want to avoid weighing in on whether Russell is an evil company or not; They may very well be, and I’m in no position to say they aren’t.

The problem I have with virtually every argument that I’ve seen advocating breaking with Russell (apparently in violation of OUS rules) is that they do little more than repeat Workers Rights Consortium talking points without even a hint of skepticism.

We’re told that closing down a factory “…prompted Worker Rights Consortium investigations, which found that the decision to close the factory was at least partly because of [unionization attempts], constituting a violation of Honduran labor laws.”

That’s all very well and good, but did anyone honestly expect them to come to any other conclusion? The WRC has painted a proverbial target on Russell’s back, and I think everyone would be absolutely shocked if they didn’t reach the exact conclusion that they did, in fact, reach.

To put it another way, I find the WRC’s “findings” about as convincing as a report reading something along the lines of “an investigation by the Democratic National Committee found that George W. Bush was a bad President” or “investigations by the Communist Party of the USA found that capitalism is bad”. Those statements may or may not be true, but, like anything coming from the WRC, they’re not exactly unbiased.

As part of their college education, students are expected to show at least a modicum of skill in critical thinking.

It would be nice if those skills could be put to use questioning the veracity of claims of corporate wrongdoing made by an organization whose express purpose is to accuse corporations of wrongdoing.

I’m not necessarily disputing the claims that Russell may in fact be a rotten company. I’d just like to see people be a bit more careful about repeating what amounts to little more than propaganda.

Then again, hope springs eternal.

A sneak preview of our possible upcoming issue of “The Comic Pravda.”

Last week the Model United Nations was on campus, and we received this thoughtful note from a young highschooler/diplomat:

On a side note, I’ve always wondered about how countries like Iran or North Korea get represented in the model U.N. I mean, is there a 15 year-old girl sitting there calling for the destruction of Israel?

On a further aside, The Groovy Fascists is a good band name.

This video of the ignominious end of some kind of student protest at NYU has been making the rounds today, and it really is worth a laugh. It kind of reminds me of the 2000 occupation of Johnson Hall by a motley assortment of protesters demanding that the U of O join the Workers Rights Consortium.

The NYU kids, though, had an even more hillarious list of demands than did the WRC protesters. In addition to the usual laundry list of college progressive smegma, they decided to include such reasonable requests as the establishment of a student commission with full power “to vote on proxies, draft shareholder resolutions, screen all university investments, establish new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility and override all financial decisions the committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions” (and you thought the ASUO was bad…), forcing the university to “donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza”, and demanding that someone else pick up the tab for their political theatrics by compensating “all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.”

My favorite part of the video, though (aside from the cameraman bleating out platitudes about “consensus”, “hierarchy”, and “power structures” that he obviously thinks makes him sound “academic”), comes at the end when he’s making video of the protesters’ possessions just in case campus security confiscates their stuff. After making sure to document all the MacBooks, iPods, and headphones the rabble-rousers are carrying around in their bags, he proclaims that the police won’t be interested in confiscating a water bottle, since “they probably drink corporate water.”

Fight the power!

In response to Stephen Steven Soderbergh’s swooning hagiography of Che Guevara, Reason has posted no less than four different articles in the last couple of days condemning the film and lamenting the disgusting love affair people have with the Che, the Castro regime, and its Chavista sidekick in Venezuela.

There’s way too much to try to summarize here, but they’re all worth reading. After all, Soderbergh’s “Guerilla” is almost certain to end up being screened here at the U of O by some student group or another purporting to promote “social justice” or some other euphemism for anti-capitalism.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what a tantrum looks like:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

…

I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election.

I can tell you one thing, if electing Obama means we won’t be subjected to another four years of tiresome faux-antifa screeds and “Save the Republic!” posturing, I might consider voting for him.*

To be fair to Ms. Wolf, though, she’s been playing at this little game of hers for awhile now, so maybe she actually believes it.

* Not really.

Everyone wants to be iconic.