Updated 4/9/12 – 3:35 PM

1) ASUO Constitution Court rules “these matters are best left to the ASUO Elections Board for adjudication.”

And also! Both related and unrelated..

2) ASUO Constitution Court rules to remove VP Candidate Lamar Wise from his position as ASUO Senate President as a result of a grievance filed by ASUO Senator Lindy Mabuya.

A Statement from the Katie & Alex Campaign:

“We made it a standard to run a clean campaign and I am extremely disappointed that this isolated incident has occurred where two individuals exercised extremely poor judgment. It saddens me immensely that this has occurred, as the rest of the Katie and Alex team, as well as the Ben and Lamar team, ran an amazing outreach drive to engage students on extremely important matters. The individuals responsible for this have been removed from the campaign.”

Ben Bowman and Lamar Wise of the Ben & Lamar campaign, along with Sam Dotters-Katz of the YES (Your EMU SRC) campaign, have filed grievances against the Katie & Alex campaign; they claim to have been hacked by Chuckie-D himself (Former OSPIRG Chair Charles Denson, spouse of VP Katie Taylor), and that their campaign materials were fucked with.

Wait what? Ben & Lamar’s management team confronted the Katie & Alex campaign, and “at least five” members “came forward with this information and all showed remorse except for Denson*.”

Hacked how? Wise says he lost access to his Gmail after opening a phishing website disguised as a Google Calendar component. Dotters-Katz says his email was also tampered with.

Fucked with how? Denson apparently used “find and replace” to jumble 12,000 phone numbers on a contact list of possible Ben & Lamar voters. The grievance states that hundreds of volunteer hours were wasted making calls to the wrong people. Dotters-Katz had a similar complaint, claiming that contacts of the YES campaign were either deleted or tampered with. Among the deleted was a list of student leaders in support of the campaign.

So who exactly? The grievances name Katie Taylor, Charles Denson, Kerry Snodgrass, Molly Bennison and Andrew Rogers as the people aware of the act.

Sam Dotters-Katz is calling this an “unprecedented act of cyber espionage.”

The Ben & Lamar campaign is calling for an immediate injunction on the election.

As for us at The Oregon Commentator, we’re calling for Katie Taylor and Charles Denson’s expulsion from planet earth. That’s right. We’re tired of writing about them. Did you think we were actually surprised by this? They’re simply living up to what we’ve called them out on being all along: the devil’s spawn. Look, this isn’t an absurd accusation. They’re a young married couple! Why else would they devote themselves to a life’s work of student manipulation? It just doesn’t make any sense.

We’ll just have to see what the ASUO Constitution Court  ASUO Elections Board does about this. Since these grievances concern the devil himself, let’s hope the Court Board likes a good exorcism.

Demons be gone!

*This post is a regurgitation of this ODE article, so read the original. Love you Emily!

On March 6, during an intramural basketball game, a fight broke out between opponents from each team. Becky Metrick covered the story the next day in Daily Emerald, which can be found here. Today, the Emerald‘s front page features an article by Josephine Woolington covering the meeting organized by Kendaris Hill (former president of the Black Student Union). According to the concerned students of the Black Student Union, the Ol’ Dirty‘s placement of the photo (probably the first or third one in the series here) of Amin Tufa being taken into custody by DPS officers was inappropriate. The picture was placed on the front page next to an unrelated headline regarding crime in the West University neighborhood.

Let me just say a few things:

1. Black people have been on the front page of newspapers before! It’s not a new thing.

2. Crime happens. And if it happens next to or on campus, perhaps it should be covered in the campus newspaper, no?

3. I sure as hell did not immediately pin all of the crime conducted West of campus on Tufa when reading the headline. That would be racial profiling.

4. Finally, Black Student Union… You do know that the editor-in-chief of the Emerald is black himself, right?

Editor-in-chief Tyree Harris as quoted by Woolington in today’s Ol’ Dirty: “The story was clearly questioning everything involved in the situation. [...] Nobody in the newsroom was trying to portray this story in a stereotypical way.” I agree with Harris’s assertion that the stories were indeed questioning the situation.

Apparently, the Ol’ Dirty better think twice before putting a picture of a black man next to the word “crime” in a cramped newspaper– lest they hurt somebody’s feelings. Ol’ Dirty, why must you be so environmentally conscious so as to save space by putting your stories so close together! Haha, I kid, but basically, these complaints translate to: “It confuses people when the word ‘crime’ and a picture of a black man appear together but do not relate nor coincide!”

So, perhaps the next step is to start giving each story a 1.5 inch border between it and any other story, making the newspaper a more safe and pleasant thing to read. However, complications may arise with the Climate Justice League. Seems like Ol’ Dirty is in some hot water! The links to the ODE stories are above– Your thoughts?

Mobile Mayor Sam Jones holds intruder at gunpoint; man says God sent him

Cat travels 200 miles under car hood in Ohio

Swallowed pen still works 25 years later

12 Horrible Christmas Gifts To Help Say, “I Hate You” Though, we’re still not sure why these are bad ideas. I mean, we got #4 for the Ol’ Dirty. Also, really, I can think of worse things: a life’s subscription to the Ol’ Dirty, used underwear, rotten moldy apples….these people are just not very creative.

David And Janean Richards Set Guinness Record With 331,038 Xmas Lights

When an “anonymous tip” was given to the Oregon Daily Emerald Staff, intrepid journalist and photographer Peter Parker was first to the scene of the crime. He arrived at 1:35  in the morning, in time to see the culprits sprint away from the hit and run deed in a sparsely populated suburban neighborhood not anywhere near where a reporter would be imagined to be at that hour. Hell, the photographer even reacted faster than the Chancellor and his family who were home at the time. After snapping a photo of the web-slinging vigilantes so clear he had to be standing to take it, and not running after the culprits who would have surely seen the bespectacled reported just gawking from where the crime scene was, he raced back to the Daily Bugle, where his boss Mr. Jameson had no clue how he was the only one capable of getting a clear shot of the radioactive renegades. Pausing a moment to clench his cigar in hand and declare that Spider-Man was a menace and that the city has no room for vigilantes like him, the meek Peter Parker stepped out with his payment, changed in a phone booth, and fought the Green Goblin on top of a building, because he was goddamned Spider-Man and only an idiot wouldn’t realize that for a photographer to get such a clear shot of the vandals in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, they would have to have been party to the valdalism and the vandals are a little less “unidentified” than the Emerald lets on.

Seriously, the photo snap is from behind, but the reporter knew that they were not only all wearing bandanas and masks, but that they were all male. How did they accomplish such investigative journalism? Because they were in the same group and are using the Emerald to give their boring, unimaginative vandalism the attention they crave by legitimizing it with a report. Seriously, either their stories have no editorial process or their editor missed some Blue’s Clues shit here.

EDIT: Overnight the story, along with the images in question, was pulled from the ODE’s website. Luckily, the Register Guard still had a copy of the good one, because you can’t just upload things online and erase all traces of them.

http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslocalnews/27240641-41/lariviere-state-university-board-oregon.html.csp

Shaggy 2 Dope is the Oregon Commentator’s science blogger. A guest contributor who is not a student, Shaggy enjoys music, professional wrestling, playing with his children, and anti-social acts of violence. He writes every week in response to JoAnna Wendel’s Oregon Daily Emerald science column.

Hello friends. I’m sorry it’s been so long since we last spoke. I realize that my nemesis, Oregon Daily Emerald columnist JoAnna Wendel, has published two articles since I issued a public challenge to her and I have not responded. I intend to. I’d say that being a multi-platinum recording artist, record label-founder and all-around renaissance man is demanding, but that’s no excuse. I’ll try to be on time next week, but here are my thoughts on Wendel’s work this week.

Wendel’s first column alleges that a new “species” of human has evolved. “Collegius baconus” is supposedly its name and Wendel says it has evolved in visible time, and that she’s surprised. Well, of course a scientist would be surprised.

What they don’t realize is that evolution is one of life’s little miracles, like looking into your son’s eyes after he gets into his first hockey fight or the little yellow powder that makes Funyuns so salty. “It’s just salt dude!” they’ll tell you. Maybe they’ll say, “Evolution is a natural process,” or, “Your son displays early signs of psychosis.” But no, scientists, who, as I have already elaborated, are all motherfuckers, are always trying to leech the magic out of miracles like evolution.

They are making me so pissed.

Everyone knows evolution has nothing to do with scientists. If scientists had their way, we probably never would have heard of evolution. Evolution: it’s something human beings have known about since the beginning of time. If we’d left it up to scientists, they’d probably tell us evolution is caused by “chemical imbalances of the brain” or “too much drinking” — just a few of the outrageously false explanations the medical scientists with which which I’m forced to talk try to come up with — and they’d be wrong.

Evolution is a miracle. It has nothing to do with science. You can’t explain it, just like you can’t explain what’s inside Fonz Pond.

Fonz Pond

I’ll tackle Wendel’s other article a little later. Shaggy out.

Hi there. My name is Shaggy 2 Dope Utsler and you may know me as a member of multi-platinum rap group Insane Clown Posse. My reason for writing this post is to warn JoAnna Wendel that I will not put up with her nonsense anymore. Wendel is a columnist for the campus newspaper here at the University of Oregon (her work can be viewed here). Her column, simply put, is virulent. It concerns science. I have made my opinions on science known before. They can be viewed in longer form here. To wit: the lies of scientists, all of whom are motherfuckers, are making me increasingly pissed. This means you Wendel. So every time you see fit to make me pissed by spreading your lies, I will publish a refutation of said lies on this blog. It is not enough, but I hope to do a public service in this way. And public service has always been the watchword for the Insane Clown Posse.

Dear Oregon Daily Emerald i.e. Ol’ dirty,

You guys are seriously making this too easy. You could at least hide the egregious errorz. This is like handing out the Easter eggs two minutes into the hunt. Or maybe the West University/South Hills thieves got your copy editors (in which case I am very sorry for your loss–because that would not be a laughing matter at all. Not even a little bit.)?

Love always,

Theee Commentator

The Oregon Daily Emerald is reporting that University of Oregon American Sign Language Professor Peter Quint has been fired for a comment he made to a student in his ASL 203 course on May 4th. From the article:

Quint began the class Wednesday with a personal story about being confronted by a group of men with guns while traveling in Pakistan with a group of friends. According to students, Quint, who is deaf, explained he was able to get out of the situation safely because he could communicate to the men that he was not a threat.

The story was intended to highlight the importance of communication, students said. It came about after several students repeatedly ignored Quint’s requests to only sign conversation. Quint lost his hearing due to meningitis when he was two and insisted students only sign during his classes so everyone could participate.

According to students present, later in Wednesday’s class, Quint noticed that a student spoke rather than signed, got upset and asked the student, “Do you want me to shoot you?”

“He wasn’t saying he was actually going to shoot anyone,” Claire Johnson, who is in several of Quint’s classes this term, said of the comment, adding that it was intended to relate back to the story and was taken out of context. “I didn’t find it threatening.”

While an inappropriate comment, certainly, was Quint entirely out of line? I’ve never taken an American Sign Language class, but I have taken the 200-level Spanish sequence, and in those classes we were required to speak Spanish. Indeed, in 201, if you spoke English at all the professor would not acknowledge your question or comment.

It doesn’t seem like this situation should be any different, especially since ASL now counts for language requirements in preparation for a Bachelor of Arts degree. And especially since Quint could not hear his students, whereas most if not all Spanish profs at the UO can speak English, the need to sign was even more immediate.

According to the rest of the article, the students in Quint’s classes were not given much if any say in the process of his termination. Who made the decision to fire him, and what was their motivation? Did Quint have tenure, and did that contribute to his firing?

This story, needless to say, is developing. We’ll provide more information as it comes available.

“Well, that’s embarrassing.”

That was my reaction when I opened to the opinion page of the Oregon Daily Emerald today and found this:

Top 10 Ways you know you’re Republican

Whether you’re a gun-toting Texan or a money-hogging oil tycoon, the GOP has enough emphasis on “good ol’ American family” to make you idolize people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

If you don’t know whether you’re a Republican at heart, we have 10 signs that show that you are indeed a Republican.

1) Your idea of a tea party consists of 40-year-old men with guns
2) You’re pro-child and against educating them
3) You still think Barack Obama was born in Kenya
4) You believe Judgment Day is May 21
5) Women’s Rights?
6) The thought of things trickling down turns you on
7) Sarah Palin? Michelle Bachman? Total RILFs, bro
8) You’ve gone through three divorces, but you think gay marriage will ruin the American family structure
9) You think Dick Cheney is a good hunter
10) Your news is fair and balanced

Let’s let alone for a minute the fact that the Emerald opinion desk wouldn’t know subtlety or humor if they walked up and introduced themselves. Let’s also let alone the fact that there are so many better things the Ol’ Dirty could have put in that space that students would have cared about. (While we’re at it, we can also ignore the gross misspelling of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s name, although it will serve to illustrate my point.)

This list shows a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of the Republican Party and what it’s about, especially in Oregon.

I am a registered member of the Oregon Republican Party, and a proud one at that. I am a member because of the three things the Oregon Republican Party stands for: accountability in spending, protecting our environment and protecting our schools. The misspelling of Rep. Bachmann’s name was not the only flaw in the severely misguided column; it is clear that when it passed through the opinion editor’s desk, it was never fact checked, not even a little bit.

Not every Republican is a tea-partier, a birther or a social conservative. We’re not all religious nuts, and we don’t all blindly stand behind elected leaders from our party.

Republicans identify as such because we believe in fiscal responsibility and civil liberties. We believe that all our constitutional rights should be exercised to their fullest extent, including the right to keep and bear arms. We believe in national defense, a free market and energy independence.

We believe in making a better America for all citizens.

At the Oregon Commentator, we publish blog posts and articles that are based on facts. We make fun of people, too, but it is always warranted and has a point. And we make sure to fact-check our pieces to the fullest extent, especially if we’re going to call someone (or a group of someones) out.

I would implore the folks at the Ol’ Dirty Emerald to, in the future, do some fact-checking, research “humor” and find some class. That is, if they haven’t strayed too far from it already.

I’ll leave you with three reasons it’s awesome to be a Republican:

1. Save what you make. Keep what you earn.
2. Avocados, papayas, bananas and every other fruit and vegetable that isn’t grown in the Willamette Valley (nom).
3. Teddy Roosevelt. Enough said.

Apparently just learning how to show up on time and do what you’re told isn’t good enough anymore. The front page of today’s Ol’ Dirty featured a story about Oregon House Bill 2732, which would withhold a graduating high school senior’s diploma until they “showed proof of application to college, the U.S. armed forces or into an apprenticeship program.” Sound like complete bullshit? Apparently not enough bullshit for the majority of the Oregon House of Representatives.

The vote was split 33-26. Two thirds of the House Democrats voted for it, and while the Republicans weren’t so keen on it (only one third voted for it).

So in addition to forcing young adults kids to enlist in the military or take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt in hopes of a brighter job market by the time you’ve hit legal drinking age, it will also create a new breed of dropout for students who don’t want to do either, or don’t know yet. That’ll be great for the already-shaky state of the Oregon educational system. But Rep. Tobias Read (D-Beaverton) sees it another way:

“This bill does not intend to tell anyone what the right choice is for them. It merely seeks to prompt consideration of that question,” Read said on the House floor. “Think about the student who intends to work in the family business. Wouldn’t he likely benefit from some accounting or bookkeeping classes at the community college.”

Yes, yes he (or she) would. But does he really think that there’s anyone on the face of the earth who’s thought about that more that the student has? After all, they’ve had a long time to think about it, and by that time probably had to answer to the incessant “So what are you going to do next?” from the family about 470 times. Maybe he knew exactly what he wanted to do at 18, and never spent most of his twenties wondering if what he was doing was really what he should be, (unless everyone else feels that way, too; if so, ignore that last sentence).

Next it moves on to the Democrat-controlled Oregon Senate (60% Democrats / 40% Republicans), where it will likely fester for some time before being passed along party lines and then blocked by the courts.

The Oregon Daily Emerald reported today that the family of a university alumnus, Kerry Lewiecki, who committed suicide with a firearm are now pushing the legislature for a waiting period for handgun purchases. From the article:

“People get the idea that they can’t go on living and they act on that within minutes or even hours of having that thought,” said Lewiecki’s father, E. Michael Lewiecki. “If (Kerry) had not been able to purchase a handgun so easily, I think there’s a good chance it might not have happened.”

I sympathize with the family’s  loss, but I don’t see any logic to the argument that people who decide to kill themselves are regularly purchasing firearms at the time of their decision for the express purpose of doing so, even if Lewiecki did. Sad as it may be, I’m fairly confident that, had he not had access to a firearm, Lewiecki would have found another way to kill himself. Unless we as a society are intent on putting 14-day waiting periods on sleeping pills, too, then let’s be careful to not confuse method with motivation.

ASUO Elections Coordinator Will Price has not yet returned phone calls regarding the Elections Board’s handling of pending grievances.

Rainfall seemed to only slightly damper campaign activities today. Student’s United’s Brian Allen, currently ASUO Outreach Coordinator, was seen sporting a multi-color umbrella hat earlier today.

According to the Oregon Daily Emerald‘s blog, Publisher Ryan Frank contacted officials from both Students United, who had been stamping copies of the ODE with pro-SU messages, and Ben and Katie, whose filers were found in copies of the ODE yesterday. Both campaigns were apologetic, denied official knowledge of the activities and promised to take steps to prevent them in the future. Editor-in-Chief Nora Simon discussed the situation, and outlined the paper’s plans to provide fair, unbiased elections coverage.

A full news story will be  posted tonight after the Candidate Debate. A Recap of tonight’s special Senate Meeting will also be posted later either tonight or early tomorrow.

UPDATE: The Commentator, was able to contact Price, who said he would forward information on the grievances filed thus far tonight. He also stated that the Elections Board will be deciding the grievances tomorrow.

I know somebody commented on this under Rockne’s post, but I feel that it deserves a little front page space. From yesterday’s Emerald, page 4, the continuation of the OSPIRG article:

ASUO President Amelie Rousseau told the Emerald, in response to the events of the Wednesday hearing, that she would veto any ACFC budget that did not include at least some funding for OSPIRG.

I can understand voicing one’s opinions on a matter and stating that one would be unlikely to vote in favor of a budget with no OSPIRG funding, but isn’t strict “we do things my way or else” behavior the sort of thing people tried to stamp out in, like, kindergarten? No room for compromise, no contingencies, just “if there’s no OSPIRG funding then I’m telling?”

The theory behind government is that it represents the interests of the governed, and we have Rousseau kissing OSPIRG’s boo-boos after a fairly obvious display of opinion from some senators. I’m not saying she has to mindlessly cow-tow to the majority opinion, but to completely disregard a 4-1 ruling of your peers is a little… yeah.

The University of Oregon’s student newspaper is financially solvent again, two professional staff members at the Oregon Daily Emerald said, after years of running in the red.

The news comes on the heels of the paper’s announcing the hire of a new publisher, Ryan Frank, to take over from Mike Thoele, who has held the job in an interim capacity since being hired in August.

Thoele was a former Register-Guard reporter and editor who also spent nine years as owner of weekly newspapers in Junction City and Veneta. Measures he has taken to ensure the paper’s solvency include cutting the number of professional staff it pays and hiring more advertising executives.

The most notable measure, though, is the production of a coffee table book to commemorate the UO football team’s season. Emerald business manager Kathy Carbone said the book is nearly sold out.

The Emerald’s financial straits have led to concern over its long-term future, and were even at the root of a strike by the paper’s editorial staff during the 2008–09 school year.

The new publisher is Ryan Frank, currently an investigative reporter for the Oregonian, and he will begin to take the reins at the UO’s campus paper on Feb. 28, according to a press release sent to Emerald alumni. Frank was Emerald editor while he was a UO student.

The Emerald publisher is in charge of administering the paper’s financial affairs and creating a business plan for its operations.

I realize I shouldn’t be writing this, since I am a former Emerald reporter and editor, and that affiliation overrides my ability to report it to my own standard of independence. But nobody else had written anything here about it as of my logging on, so I had no choice.

Apparently some OSPIRG petitioners went to a coffee hour event for international students at the MIC and send their petition around in a way that made some people upset, including me after reading about it. I wish you could make this up. From today’s Ol’ Dirty:

“It was not an event that was targeted for them to come and politically try and push their agenda on to people. It was a social event, meant to be talking, learning about international culture,” [University junior Janessa] Nelson said. “I don’t think they were fully telling the students what they were, who they were, what it was for … they speak English, but maybe not the best English, and to have them sort of be pushed into signing something, they weren’t really spending a lot of time with them.”

And the fun continues:

“There were like three of them (OSPIRG petitioners), and they kind of spread out across the room, and they were all signing; it just seemed really rude to me. We’re there to have coffee and have fun with each other,” [University sophomore Daniel] Hartley said. “And it also just seemed weird, because over half of these people are not citizens of the United States … I know half of them didn’t understand what they were doing.”

Are you that desperate for signatures that you have to crash an event at MIC and get them from people who are just learning about this country and this university? This is the worst kind of manipulative politics. If I was put in that situation under the same conditions as those students and then, after the fact, was given the information I have at my disposal now, I would feel taken advantage of. Whoever’s idea this was has some explaining to do.