OSPIRG is seeping its way back on to the UO Campus. A representative, whose name I missed but for whom this is apparently her first year at UO (coincidence?), made a pitch to my J 4/583 class this morning, delivering the usual OSPIRG story about how nationwide activism for “causes that you’re passionate about” is worth gobs of your money. When I asked her point blank about what manner of events OSPIRG wanted to hold on campus, I got a long explanation that basically amounted to (and I’m paraphrasing) “we’re going to collect signatures and recruit students to phone bank and write letters to President Obama to maintain the moratorium on new offshore oil drilling.” ODE Managing Editor Lauren Fox was insightful enough to ask if OSPIRG had supported one slate or another in the most recent ASUO elections, which the OSPIRG Rep. emphatically denied. Her denial was carefully crafted to obscure for the class the connections between OSPIRG and the current Executive, or that combination’s plans to re-fund the former. Her appearance was intended to be an exercise in interviewing, but the distribution of interest cards and voter registration materials made it seem something else entirely. On the bright side, she’s coming back next week for a follow up. This will be fun, then.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 30th, 2010 at 11:32 by Rockne Andrew Roll and is filed under Campus, OSPIRG, Worthless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.