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.

The fifth annual zombie walk was held on Valentines Day, described as a general screw you to the cliches of the Hallmark Holiday. Bloody festivities started at Pioneer Cemetery, where the organizer laid down the rules, including “Don’t bite anyone, don’t get in the way of traffic, and don’t overcrowd the bars.”

After waiting roughly an hour for stragglers, the horde began its grisly walk to Taylors and the festivities began. If a venue was at capacity, the almost-undead moved on to the next. Walking dead were seen at Diablo’s, John Henry’s, and the Horse Head in addition to the bars around campus.

“Bar’s love us,” remarked a participant, her mouth caked with fake blood made from starch and food coloring. Indeed, Diablo’s had gone out of its way to accommodate the walking dead with skeleton themed decor and DJ’s that played Thriller.

But all good things must end, and by the time the horde left Diablo’s, it had fractured into smaller cells, which quickly split off to go to their own pubs. See all the gruesome action below.

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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Here is Phylicia Haggerty’s reply to ASUO Sen. Tyler Griffin’s previous email:

“Tyler,

I appreciate you writing me back. To clarify a few things 1) I am not ignorant and 2) I never said ASUO members have never been discriminated against. I did say that most of you are probably not taking this situation seriously because based on who the Pacifica forum is gearing hatred towards most of you would not classify. I think it was very unprofessional for you to say and I quote “how dare me” and that I should be ashamed of what I said. I think it is truly sad that some of the ASUO members have to thought twice about an issue that is blatantly wrong. I think it is ironic that from what I said in my e-mail that you would have the audacity to claim that you are scared of me. It is too bad that this issue probably will not be resolved until someone gets hurt. I do apologize for saying that nothing has been done about this issue because I know most of you do understand and that you are trying to find a solution. I will not be contacting you on any other circumstances and I do appreciate your time because I know you are very busy. I did contact Student Affairs and I have falsely accused ASUO Senate members in that the policy decision making is not left up to you completely in that the President makes final decisions. Thank you again for your time.

Phylicia Haggerty”

At this point in time, since Griffin hasn’t responded to Haggerty (or hasn’t forwarded us his response) we might as well take a swing at this one. Let’s start with her first e-mail, one which is astoundingly hilarious in its authors minute grasp of rational thought, or a basic concept of the U.S. Constitution.

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Yesterday our blog received its highest one-day traffic count ever. The site received 1,880 views yesterday, mostly due in part to two  wonderous events that, by themselves, are merely disasters.

Of course, I’m talking about  the neverending debacle that is the Pacifica Forum coupled with Daily Emerald sports writer Jonathan Marx ’s decision to run a story accusing beloved campus figure Jeremiah Masoli of stealing.

So, on behalf of the Oregon Commentator, here is staffer Pete Lesiak to present the “Golden Clusterfuck Award” to Marx and the PF respectively.

You deserve it.

Apparently the Pacifica Forum protesters discussed a rumor that the Oregon Commentator would, “Send 30 or 40 people to protest our protest of the Pacifica Forum.” Looks like they were wrong.

Apathy is a human right.

“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].”

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[Due to technical difficulties, the body of this post has disappeared. The Commentator is working on repairing the problems. Look for the story in the upcoming edition of the Commentator.]

Morality has never been hotter.

There has been a disturbing run of PSA’s on MTV lately (not to mention South Park syndication) that I am sure will throw Nancy Grace into a hissy fit.

Athinline.org is the website the MTV ads are pushing lately, and I’m sure that for some people the website does some good, so I won’t write it off completely. Most confusing about the advertisements, however, is their appearance on MTV itself – a channel which produces constant surveillance of celebrities and promotes the over-sexualization of precarious individuals.

Conversely, the website’s messages of “Anti-Sexting” (sexy-texting for those of you who don’t speak LE3T) and how to counter “Constant Messaging” doesn’t seem to coincide with the basic concept of MTV’s programming.

In any case, I’m glad that MTV has decided in recent years to run seemingly obligational, horribly contrived messages to their younger viewers preaching responsibility. It fits right in.

Now, who’s up for a wet t-shirt contest in Cabo? Spring Break is right around the corner.

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.

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The Emerald Magazine came out today.. as an insert.

I for one am thoroughly outraged at the under representation of one very important part of the holiday season.

Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Korean present wrapping traditions…

Where is winter solstice?

GAP understands me.

Why the Commentator receives e-mails like this I will never know. But Jesus, I’m glad we do. All I can say is that the world is slowly getting dumber, one rogue at a time. I’ll let the e-mail do the talking:

While the former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate has achieved success with record book sales and support for a 2012 presidential election bid, she has also achieved something else few public figures ever have:   heroine status in a children’s book.

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I fear I can’t write something that will do justice to that ASUO Senate meeting. It was “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.” It was “Don Quijote.” It was “The Four Seasons.” And I? I am merely William Hung, tuneless, charmless, clueless.

Let’s plunge in anyway at a most unexpected commencement: A surplus request from the Holden Leadership Center. Your typical surplus request is reliably boring: a group requests money and then is granted it, typically with some resistance if there is an off-campus conference involved. I poised my hand above the snooze button of my consciousness. Then John Duncan, the HLC honcho, coiled his body round the Service Learning Program, dislocated his jaw, and requested the Senate’s permission to dine.

The Senate, awestruck by his display of serpentine elasticity, mustered little resistance or even comment on the subject, and so Duncan, with surprising efficiency, swallowed the SLP whole, along with whatever money the ASUO allocates to it. This means, of course, transfers the program to the jurisdiction of Duncan’s stomach, which allows students significantly less oversight into how it spends its money than the Programs Finance Committee, which had previously administered it.

And that acrobatic act of gastronomy was merely the first act in an operatic meeting, about which read more below the fold. (more…)

According to the Chronicle of Higher Ed, a student at Grove City College, a Christian college in Pennsylvania, has been suspended after administrator’s discovered he was working in gay porn. Here’s the skinny (emphasis added):

The student, John Gechter, told the newspaper that he planned to appeal the one-year suspension, which was a direct result of his work in pornography, a Grove City spokeswoman said today in a statement. Campus officials reportedly discovered Mr. Gechter’s alternate identity, Vincent DeSalvo, when a student browsing the Internet [Yeah, "browsing." Sure.] forwarded a few images, via e-mail, to others at the college.

[...]

Grove City’s student handbook lays out possible penalties for specific infractions, including a suspension of at least one week for “possessing pornographic material” or “premarital sex (heterosexual or homosexual),” as well as “throwing soap” or “water battles.” [!?]

As the Chronicle points out, annual tuition at the college is $18,514, and the college refuses to accept any federal financial aid. What’s a poor college student to do in this economy? (However, this also begs the question of why Gechter would pay almost 20K to learn about how Jesus rode dinosaurs in the first place.)