The Lesser Of Two Evils
While readily acknowledging my failings as a member of the campus community, I’d like to offer up the following quote from whichever half of the Strawn/Aguilar ticket was doing the talking. (Strawn, I think.) This is in response to the question “There’s always lip service paid to keeping the incidental fee on campus, but every year OSPIRG, OSA and USSA get their money. Do you have any real plans to change that?” Follow the bouncing ball:
We can guarantee that the lip service will stop. We think we have to acknowledge that OSPIRG, OSA, and other off-campus entities are fundable. We can’t debate the fundamentals year after year. What we should focus on is getting those budgets to comply with our terms and processes. Departments such as the Career Center and Rec Center provide great models of how to fund large entities with budgets that are necessarily different from the average student group’s. If we look to decisions such as those for guidance I think we can find a reasonable way to fund the off-campus groups.
What the hell kind of a guarantee is that? A guarantee to not even pretend to pay lip service to the issue? I have nothing against Strawn personally; he appears to be neither a crook nor a flake. But there’s no goddamn way I’m voting for someone who considers OSPIRG and the Career Center to be comparable programs.
Wouldn’t surprise me, I think he’s taken the Andy Elliot position.
I’m not sure what to think of Mr. Colin Andries anymore. At first, he seemed to be a vociferous proponent of fiscal accountability, and he was not afraid to stick it to OSPIRG and the USSA.
So what’s happened? Is Colin so demoralized that he feels the need to go against the grain at every opportunity? Is he consciously trying to make waves because he feels as if the whole process is a joke? It’s quite possible. And it underscores the primary problem that has haunted ASUO politics for years: Anybody good, with real ideas and passion, will undoubtedly lose interest in a process that is designed to perpetuate the status quo.
Therefore, I maintain that Colin is just being passive agressive. He truly seems to despise those people.
Understandable, and given the conditions of elections I think reasonable. I’m coming around to your lower-turnout position, but I still think that a different style of voting might be a more optimal solution. Further, Strawn’s answer on fee-control is reasonable and he has shown himself to be in favor of lowering the fee where possible, unlike certain memebers of Senate we had come to expect more from.