Happy Holidays
The Oregon Commentator tops of 2007 with a bang. Our Holiday Issue has everything from the outrage of the Pacifica Forum, to Aroused America, to sticking it to the tobacco fascists, to whatever it is that Drew drew for Nobody, and more. I’d write more, but the all-nighter CJ, Nicole and I just had has long past caught up to me. Enjoy.
Thanks, gentlemen, for giving me a reason to slack off at work. The issue, at first glance, looks the best out of the ones you have produced.
Ooooh, re: Neil Brown’s take on my opinion that the ASUO cannot be saved.
No, it can’t. Sorry. It’s kinda pathetic, I know. Though, here’s the thing, now that I go to tons of these public hearings and committee meetings here in Portland, I’ve come to realize that the same rubber-stamping, side-conversation-having, petty bullshit takes place at even the highest levels.
The ASUO serves the people ostensibly serving the students, by padding their resumes — that’s kinda it.
All this fuzzy talk about how the ASUO needs to make “sure the interests of the entire student body are taken into consideration, not just a few members of select interest groups” sounds nice, but it’s oh-so trite.
Here’s what the ASUO needs to do (in practical terms):
Hire a fucking auditor. An auditor who files quarterly reports and is suspicious of spending patterns. He/she would work alongside the Ombudsman.
Maintain public records. Yes, this is required by law. Perhaps, though, the ASUO performs the bare minimum. Still, all public documents, including written reports, budgets and minutes should be regularly uploaded to the ASUO Web site. Oh, wait, aspects of your Web site haven’t been updated in, like, a fucking year. You are incapable of giving people up-to-the-year information on who you employ.
Perform public outreach. If you have media people working for the ASUO, have them connect with the community. They should not be “press shields”. Transparency is essential. You can get people to care about your causes by actually listening — listening to dissent, too.
There you go, guys. If you accomplish even one of these, I will shit my pants.
Whoops, there I go, being a regular Negative Nelly. Maybe Neil is right: Members of the ASUO should simply “be sure to stand on principle and don
hey neil…we called it…
what i love most about the way tyler graf writes is that i can see every single eye roll, hand movement, and upper-lip curl that would accompany this if he were speaking. what i hate most is that i find myself disagreeing with everything he says, even when i know he has a good point, because he is so snide and flippant in his rhetoric. no one likes a negative nelly.
and what are we like, a valley girl? omg…did you hear what she said about him. oooooh. he was all like, so pathetic, you know? here’s the thing, it’s oh-so whatever. i mean, like, fucking seriously. he shit his fucking pants. whoops!?
i hope now more than ever that the asuo steps up to the plate.
“taco, burrito, what’s that commin’ out of your seepdo…Uh oh!!!”
Great issue guys. I have to say that Neil Brown is one hell of a writer and I think he makes some great points about the ASUO. He can hit on my girlfriend anytime.
You know, Nicole, I’ve always been reasonably nice to you, even when you did sub-literate shit that made the OC look like it was filled with fucking morons, like thinking an Onion article was real and posting it to the blog (and that was only the tip of the iceberg). I’ve always been a big supporter of the OC, because I spent a lot of years there and helped keep it alive. I’ve offered to help make it better in the past because I think it could be, and I think there are a lot of talented people there at the moment who could still use a little editing (and there’s no shame in that).
It would be nice if, as an alum, I was treated with a little bit of respect.
Anyway, I said the issue looked good. Take the fucking compliment.
Healthcare Wine is 56%, not 36%! My hangover after drinking that shit is definitely evidence of that.
OAR 580-022-0045 “Procedures to impose applicable sanctions may be instituted against any person engaging in any of the following proscribed conduct: (3) Possession or use of firearms, explosives, dangerous chemicals, OR OTHER DANGEROUS WEAPONS or instrumentalities on institutionally owned or controlled property, unless expressly authorized by law, Board, or institutional rules;” Student conduct code and says “(3) Standards Relative to the Rights of Individuals and to the Welfare of the University Community. An environment conducive to learning is one where the rights, safety, dignity and worth of every individual are respected. The following conduct endangers such an environment, and threatens the welfare of the University community as a whole: (c) Possession, use, or threatened use of a weapon, ammunition, or any object or substance used as a weapon on University Premises or at a University Sponsored Activity unless expressly authorized by law or University Policy. A concealed weapons permit does not constitute authorization. OAR 571-021-0120.
Wow, this turned into a session of British Parlaiment rather fast.
I went to one Senate meeting this year, and I died a little bit inside. In fact, I left the meeting early, saying “Fuck this” a little louder than I intended. That and the fact that I don’t have a hard-on for insider politics make it hard to imagine that I will ever have more than a passing knowledge of the ASUO. That being said …
I appreciate the time Neil and the other conservative senators spend in that three-ring circus trying to turn things around (god knows I couldn’t handle it), but … I’m not holding my breath for the great ASUO renaissance. (Wasn’t that Campaign for Change?)
I guess I’ll just take the fucking compliment.
ASUO will always be dominated by self-righteous ideologues who are still craving power from their days on the high school student council. The group has no concept of accountability because there is no accountability. The reason people can continue to criticize the ASUO is because they have yet to be proven wrong.
Personally, I think the OC has a proud tradition of distrust for ASUO, and it would be a fucking tragedy to ever see that change.
Great issue, by the way.
Fun issue, y’all.
BTW, the Voice has put out an issue this year… and it includes a recipe for cooking up crack in your dorm room. So, I guess between that and Guy’s piece on making crack pipes we have definitive proof that the OV and the OC are now officially the exact same magazine, just as the wise alums warned us they would become. Except that the OV is now only printing four times per year.
Oh, and since we’re talking ASUO reform, we should probably take a moment to recognize the progress that has been made. The “we should spend money because we can” mentality which has long been the ideological mainstream of the ASUO has been marginalized to a small minority on Senate, and even that minority talks about “fiscal responsibility” like it matters. Until a reformist takes the Executive and the Con Court takes a form which will have any credibility at all, major reform will probably never happen. The problem is that once those things occur (and I seem them as inevitabilities), the work will only just have begun. The question will be, can fiscal conservatives take the step beyond simple criticism (which is so easy) and be satisfied with the crawling pace and tough trade-offs of real reform? Now that the ASUO opinon pendulum has swung towards reform, are their even any leaders out there who can really deliver substantive change?
Or are they too busy cooking up crack in their dorm rooms?
Ted: I was just about to do a post about crack being the new “in” for alternative campus media. As fas as becoming the same magazine, I think as long as the Voice bleeds indie culture and the OC loves to make indie nerds bleed, we will be OK.
And a half-apology goes out to the Voice crew for the tidbit in Spew…their issue was handed out about an hour after we went to press.
Hey, guys, speaking of updating the website…shouldn’t you fix the masthead page? Issue to be read when I get home from work/class.
And Tyler is right. The ASUO won’t ever “step up to the plate”. You can hope they will all you want, go ahead, hope away. Clap until Tinkerbell comes back to life for all it matters, that won’t change anything: governments are fundamentally flawed in their construction, provide bad incentives to the people within them, and those who go after whatever small modicum of power they’ll be afforded are, more often than not, completely unfit to wield it.
This is especially true of student government where the power is even more pretend than the accountability that’s meant to come with it. Honestly, there are essentially no consequences for anything any of those ASUO kids manage to fuck up, so what’s the reason they’d stop? Why not spend millions of dollars of other people’s money when you’ll never be held to account for it? Hmm…the longer I go on the more this is starting to sound like real government….
Speaking of Spew, it’s too bad that we didn’t wait a couple of days to send to print because the Insurgent just released another. This makes three issue already for the Fall term.
we are hoping to continue this pace for the rest of the year. With the recent influx of contributors of amazing content we think this should be a reasonable goal.
Apparently, the word is out that working for the SI makes you eligible for a free trip to the bay area. Another surprise is:
Well there goes the OC’s chance of taking over their website. But what really knocks my socks off is that all of the articles are in legible type. crazy.
Now might be a time to buy http://www.studentinsurgent.com and http://www.insurgent.com.
I think the Insurgent is having problems learning to use MySQL.
I’d say the OC is way above the curve on this one, everyone knows meth is the bee’s knees and the cat’s ass compared to cocaine.
Opps, forgot to add.
Tyler. I appreciate you. Don’t let the haters get you down.
I forgot to add:
Tyler, along with your hard work and support, you seem to have gave the OC a lot of your clothes. In fact, we found a whole bag of them in the filing cabinet. Drew Cattermole really took a liking to one of your old jackets.
Yes, those have been there for years. Cheers!
You did kind of use the office as a locker room…man, those were weird times.
Weird times, sure, although a few years earlier it used to be possible to find William Beutler’s clothes in the filing cabinet with Beutler still in them, asleep.