In today’s paper the Emerald endorses Jared/Juliana for ASUO Executive. This is unsurprising, if only because of Commentary Editor Ailee Slater’s proximity to Ashley Rees. Rees is, of course, one of the main people behind the Jared/Juliana campaign/slate.
But proximity alone does not invalidate an opinion– faulty reasoning does. Shall we begin?

At the debate Mann clearly attempted to portray his ticket as political “outsiders,” using a strategy that proved successful for current President Adam Walsh and Vice President Kyla Coy. And like last year, the failed campaigns have joined perceived underdogs to help them defeat the “insiders,” as they paint Axelrod and Guzman.

The Emerald furthered this inside/outside debate last year. We supported Walsh and Coy because they offered fresh perspectives that outweighed their lack of experience with running government.

“Furthered” is a strange choice of words in this instance, as it implies that one of the reasons the Emerald endorsed Walsh/Coy was because of their outsider status. In reality (and a typical display of their editorial board’s spinelessness), the Emerald endorsed both Walsh/Coy and Rees/Anker-Lagos, despite viewing Walsh/Coy’s outsider status as a demerit. (I cannot find a seperate endorsement for the General elections, so please correct me if this is not the case.)
This also demonstrates one of the very basic differences between the Commentator and the ODE. The OC prefers fresh faces, dissenting views, and people who are as unattached as possible to student groups. The closer someone is to a particular student group, the greater the chance that they’ll represent the wishes of that special interest rather than the student body as a whole. The Emerald calls this “experience.” But at its best, it’s insidership. (At worst, it’s bare corruption.) With Axelrod being a Sophomore and consequently eligible for further ASUO “service” after his term as President, the problem is only magnified.

We agree with critics of student government that powerful student unions often manipulate the Executive and other branches of the ASUO. However, we believe Axelrod and Guzman are sufficiently pragmatic and will avoid this trap.

This is a particularly ironic statement. The pragmatic position for a President to take is to please the “powerful student unions” since they have more influence over ASUO politics than any other source. It isn’t a trap to do what student groups tell you to do– it’s smart politics.

Axelrod’s experience as chairman of the Programs Finance Committee, arguably the most important committee within the ASUO, is his ticket’s strongest asset. This year, the PFC finished less than its projected budget, thanks to Axelrod’s meticulous attention to viewpoint neutrality, fairness and Green Tape Notebook rules.

None of which have anything to do with the benchmark that was set. Axelrod did a good job leading the PFC this year, particularly when taking last year’s PFC into account.

We believe he will apply his sense of fiscal responsibility to the escalating incidental fee, which Mann has failed to address. In fact, Mann has implied that he favors increasing student leaders’ stipends, which already represent a disproportionate amount of the budget.

One of the few valid points in the Editorial. Mann’s mention of increasing some stipends is quite troubling. But I find it very hard to believe that any stipend model revision under a Jared/Juliana presidency would lead to a decrease in total stipends for groups such as the Women’s Center, MEChA, or the MCC.

Mann-Grace supporters also criticize Axelrod-Guzman’s emphasis on lobbying. We agree that results of lobbying can be hard to quantify, and budgets for lobbying organizations must be examined. But the Oregon University System is facing a financial crisis, and the Oregon Legislature is in session next year. Axelrod and Guzman have the wherewithal and resources to effectively ply that body for our student interests.

All the more reason to preemptively counter any tuition raises with a cut in the incidental fee.

Axelrod has strongly protested the proposed, detrimental changes to the Student Conduct Code. Although Mann-Grace has based its campaign on Westmoreland, Axelrod has proved he’s capable of advocating for students in this issue.

What in the hell does this paragraph even mean? How are Westmoreland and the SCC connected?

Although we disagree with Axelrod’s decision to introduce the controversial ballot measure regarding Iranian nuclear proliferation to the Senate, we applaud his willingness to defend his point and to represent student concerns. Campus issues should be government’s focus, but we cannot slight him for arguing his point.

You applaud Axelrod for defending his position of wasting the Senate’s time and our money on pointless debates? Am I reading this correctly?

Finally, Axelrod has promised a “zero tolerance policy” toward rule violators in his administration. He has experience enforcing rules as Student Senate ombudsmen, and we believe he will keep this commitment. Student government needs this accountability.

This is the part of the article I read and re-read about a dozen times. Let’s take the wayback machine to March 6:

A member of the Student Senate who plans to run for president in the upcoming student government elections has failed to fulfill his duties, grounds for termination if a student files a grievance, according to documents collected from student government leaders.

Senator Dallas Brown has not attended eight of 18 required committee meetings between four different committee bodies this term, according to attendance charts collected from senate committee leaders.

I wonder what student government leaders Wilbur is talking about? Who is it that’s supposed to be in charge of documenting absences? Let’s bring ‘er forward to April 3:

A Student senator who faces sanctions for missing too many meetings was not absent for as many as previously thought, and another senator should have been kicked off the student government body earlier because she didn’t file for the major that her seat required, according to a recent audit. The updated data found that Senator Dallas Brown, who faces the possibility of being removed from Senate, attended more meetings than what was originally recorded, but still missed one meeting, a violation of student government rules.

[…]

The audit, conducted by Senate Ombudsman Jared Axelrod, found that Brown had only missed one, not six, of the 14 required meetings.

[…]

The ASUO Senate Personnel Committee met in early March at the request of the Senate ombudsman, who’s responsible for disciplining senators and documenting their nonfulfillment of duties, and came up with several recommended courses of action against senators who fail to fulfill their requirements.

Now let’s take one more leap, this time to an April 7 resignation letter from Nick Hudson:

Jared Axelrod and Stephanie Erickson forced Amy to resign because “she was not representing her constituency”.
[…]
Had Amy had been confronted with this before, she would have resigned then. Instead, they waited until election season to create a story. These individuals never removed Tyrel Love when he was sleeping during senate meetings, nor Jessica Nair who never showed up to meetings during her last few months as senator. Nor have they taken any action against the missed meetings of Senator Brown.

Is this the sort of enforcement of rules that the Emerald values? It may now, but it didn’t on April 7:

But the blame does not rest solely on [DuFour]. Axelrod and Erickson do know the rules. They should have noticed the problem earlier — before a senator undeserving of her seat received a stipend. Part of the ombudsman’s responsibility is to hold senators accountable, and Axelrod clearly dropped the ball on this.

Indeed. One has to wonder why his performance as Ombudsman is now being lauded.

• I don’t have time to find and post the links at the moment, but there’s a story by reporter Nick Wilbur in today’s ODE about how Todd Mann’s supporters have been called racists:
  

  Wannita Nualngam, who is running on the Jared Axelrod-Guzman campaign slate, wrote in her report to the BRT that two members of the Mann-Grace campaign were playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” at the Heart of Campus. Nualngam and two supporters of the slate said they witnessed the Mann-Grace supporters yell “Todd and Jontae were born in the USA. Juliana wasn’t.”

  “They assumed that since she was Latin(a) she wasn’t an American,” Nualngam wrote, calling it “a racist assumption.”

  If true, then it’s certainly a very stupid thing to say, particularly since (I believe) Guzman is from Los Angeles. What’s particularly mystifying is the quote further in the article from accused racist and Mann-supporter Dave Elliott:

  “I know I personally didn’t allude to Jared (or Guzman) being born in the USA,” he said.

  Did the ODE forget to transcribe a “not,” or is Elliott just that stupid?

• In the same story Wilbur mentions an Elections grievance filed by ASUO Multicultural Advocate Ian Tacquard against Mann. The grievances accuse the Mann/Grace ticket of improperly campaigning in the dorms and selling hot pink t-shirts.
• The ODE also has an editorial in today’s paper endorsing Axelrod/Guzman. I’ll address that particular feast of poorly-reasoned opinion when I have a bit more time and a proper keyboard.

UPDATE: Links added.

Well, tonight’s General Election debate was even more boring than the first. Attendance was down about 50% and there was noone advocating for riots in the streets. Worse yet, I didn’t have a chance to have a few drinks beforehand. So I basically listened to the two candidates tout their qualifications, brag about their accomplishments, and suck up to the OC and ODE. Not a pretty sight.

The OC digital recorder’s battery died after about twenty minutes, so I only have part of the VP portion of the debate. Trust me when I say that the audio isn’t worth listening to.

Thankfully there wasn’t anything particularly notable to report on– both of the Presidential candidates stuck to their talking points. Both agreed that viewpoint neutrality was crucial to the ASUO and Jared specifically stated that he does not want the ASUO to interfere in the operations of student publications. There was a bit of a point of contention over the issue of an Iran resolution (and other campus-unrelated resolutions.) Mann explicitly stated that he didn’t think the Senate should pass resolutions on such matters while Axelrod felt that if some students want the Senate to discuss the matter than they should do just that. He added that this particular issue (Iran) was indeed affecting some students, himself included.

The only good quotes of the night that I was able to jot down verbatim were part of an answer Todd Mann gave to a question about his ability to work within a bureaucracy like the ASUO. Mann responded that “we’ve built an amazing bureaucracy in the RHA” and had cut quite a bit of Housing’s red tape. If elected, he said, “we’re going to cut through the green tape notebook.”

Wish I had more, but there really weren’t many notable moments.
Anyways, enough for now. Our new photographer, Christin, was also at the debates and took some good pictures of the candidates. We’ll put ’em up tomorrow.

Thanks to a suggestion by Political Science major Alex Deley at tonight’s debate, there will be an impromptu ASUO Presidential debate between Jared Axelrod and Todd Mann tomorrow in the EMU Amphitheatre at 2:00pm. Details are still sketchy, but if I hear anything more before the actual debate I’ll update this post.

While popular social network MySpace has been widely attacked in the news, Facebook had up until recently remained relatively unscathed.

Well, Kent State may soon decide to disallow its athletes from participating in Facebook groups:

One football player’s interests are “football, parties and drinking” – but he is only 18 years old. Some underage gymnasts had double-shots at a party over the summer. One wrestler is “in a relationship” with one of the gymnasts. Another wrestler doesn’t have any favorite books because he doesn’t “know how to read.”

But pretty soon Facebook members won’t be able to find any of this information.

Kent State student athletes may be forced to remove their Facebook profiles within the next few days, said Laing Kennedy, Kent State athletic director.

“We are reviewing the situation,” he said. “I’m not wanting to limit student athletes’ ability to communicate with their friends and family. The concern we have is that some of them have put up on it a lot of personal information. Although the intent is harmless, the perception is that it is an invitation to the wrong people. Our interest is to protect our students.”

Read: our interest is to control our “student”-athletes’ public image and off-campus speech. Any bets on how long it will take until the UO adopts this policy?

Specifically to this comment on a Nick Hudson post a few down.

To say this is not our profession and that we are just students is to say that those who represent us in congress are just citizens.

You say that as if the statement is false. The congresscritters are just citizens: duly elected citizens who should be busy doing the will of the electorate. Not that a Constitutional Republic is going to become Libertopia in this day and age, but once long-ago such a thing was possible. They no longer fear the citizenry, or perhaps they fear us too much and are thusly protective of their own power, but I digress.

I say our profession because some of us take sudden government seriously.

I also take sudden government seriously, it’s likely to be even more insidious and freedom-killing than slowly-developed government. Student government, on the other hand, is a farce of epic proportions.

We should be professional when it concerns student government because we deal with other peoples money. In fact we allocate millions of dollars of other peoples money. This is minor league politics and student government is serious business.

That’s right, you do spend millions of dollars of other people’s money, and on what? Mostly things none of those other people want or care about. Be honenest with yourself for a minute, do you think that the average UO student actually cares if the MCC gets an extra $1000 to buy pizza for some ridiculous event? Does the typical student get anything out of the childcare subsidy? No. Like all government the ASUO is beholden to the special interest goups that elect its members. You want to save students money? Stop. Doing. Stupid. Shit. Don’t use student dollars for retreats to Sun River, don’t moronically place solar panels on the EMU, and sure as hell don’t actually pay yourselves to do it. Care about taking other people’s money, eh? Feel good to be a pickpocket?

Yes, the OC gets incidental fee funding (in the neighborhood of $15,000 a year), but guess what? Not a single person on staff gets paid. Not one. Every cent goes directly into publishing a student magazine read by UO students. The website is paid for privately. Other student groups can’t say the same thing: every ASUO position, ASUO interns, the MCC, the damn Insurgent has stipends! The Insurgent. Think about that for a second. Think about every cent that benefits no-one but its direct receiver, and remember that every last penny you put into the pocket of some bubbly Suite 4 intern was stolen from some other student who, quite frankly, probably had plans for it. You people go on about lowering the cost of education, and yet you insist on raising the Incidental Fee every year: the only part of education costs over which you have direct control keeps going up. Actions are what people care about, and the ASUO has proven time and again that it is absolutely not serious about serving the true interests of students. And yet you wonder why we don’t take you seriously?

I’m sorry Anthony thinks this is a big joke, student leaders spend long hours advocating for students who don’t even know they exist. To say this is not our profession and that we are just students is to say that those who represent us in congress are just citizens.

Cry me a river. You ASUO clowns act like it’s so bloody difficult to waste time and money. “Wow, we like, totally went to Salem and like talked about issues”. Please. “Oh no, don’t sell Westmoreland!” Whatever. Get it through your head: You’re just students. Just. Students. You have to earn respect like everyone else, and the ASUO has an abysmal record. Nobody cares because there’s no reason to: regardless, the incidental fee will go up, the Student Senate will approve virtually every special request that comes to it, and OSPIRG will get their money. I spent four years and as many Executives watching the ASUO, and I’ll tell you something: nothing ever changes. We can go ’round and ’round about exactly why that is, but thus it is and ever shall be. When we defunded OSPRIG fair-and-square, MUNGER got a special initiative organized to give their money back. How’s that for serving the will of the students?

Or, a more recent example, the Conduct Code. The ASUO takes on-face that there should be such a thing. The rest is a matter of degree. Further, it doesn’t matter what the student opinion is, Frohnmeyer and his army of zombies will do what they please anyway. Case-and-point: dry frats.

Nick Hudson is a very passionate person, and in being so he issued a very passionate resignation. This is not “hilarious”. Student politics will not be taken seriously as long as students don’t take them seriously. We are in college, grow up.

What’s more adult: hopelessly clinging to a deluded image of the noble public servant doing his/her best for everyone, or realizing that the whole exercise is hopelessly broken and learning to deal with it?

Our new issue is finally out. I’d like to thank everyone for helping with the horrible, horrible job of transcribing and checking the four interviews. Anyways, I’m too tired to put something clever in here, so enjoy the issue.

• The ODE (or as I call it, the ODW) has four ASUO-related stories on its front page today, all by Senior News Reporter Nick Wilbur. While they’re all fairly interesting, the gem is Party grievance elicits finger-pointing, which I imagine ASUO Programs Coordinator David Goward won’t particularly enjoy reading.
• Anonymous commenter “J” mentioned some anti-Jared and Juliana posters which had recently been put up (and taken down) around campus. Thanks to an anonymous (well, the submitter used what appears to be a fake name and has yet to respond to further inquiries) submission, we have some pictures:
  

  

  

  Commenter “J” also said that it “[s]eems like Jared Axelrod isn’t a fan of the first amendment.” Well, the fliers go against ASUO campaign rules: 6.2C of the Election Rules state that “Any printed campaign material for or against ballot measure (sic) must identify the sponsoring organization, committee, or person somewhere on the front of the material.” And 6.2D states that “Anonymous posters or flyers for or against a ballot measure are subject to removal by the Elections Board or any person acting with explicit permission from the Board.” Elections Coordinator Ryan Coussens informed me that he removed at least one of the fliers. As far as Axelrod is concerned, he’s never struck me as the type who’d be opposed to the first amendment. The second amendment, maybe.

Jared / Juliana – 1035
Todd / Jontae – 957
Jacob / Amy – 746
Dallas / Emily – 594
Andy / Ben – 187
Write-in – 77

I officially need to stop making predictions. Now the question is which of the two remaining tickets will be the first to consolidate their voting base.

Another grievance has been filed, this time in response to a story in the Emerald about a party purportedly held on Brown/McLain’s behalf. (As a side note, I’ve been waaay too busy to write a post about the ODE’s story. Maybe later.) The complaintant is Evan Stewart, who indicates in his Facebook profile that he is in a relationship with ASUO Programs Coordinator David Goward (Brown’s co-worker at DDS.) In the grievance, Stewart refers to the story in the Emerald and asks that elections officials investigate the story. Here’s a 89k pdf of the grievance. I believe that Elections Coordinator Ryan Coussens, among others, is investigating the matter as we speak. What a long, long day.

Just a few minutes ago I was handed an envelope containing Nick Hudson’s resignation from the ASUO. In it, Hudson criticizes the current state of the ASUO:

The ASUO is all about advocating for your own special interests, not what is best of the entire student population. The ASUO Executive was successful in quashing OSPIRG’s gratuitous and wanton request of a position that had no intention of benefiting the student population. Furthermore, specific individuals within the ASUO continuously advocate for their particular interests, rather than what it best for everyone. As you may well be aware, the EMU Board is discussing moving the Leadership Resource Office to the arcade space, simply because the Survival Center does not want to move. The Survival Center states that it has a history where it is at. Well, the LRO does as well. Moreover, more students need and want leadership training. By expanding the LRO into a place that is more open to the entire student body, instead of in a dark corner with no visibility, leadership will expand on campus. Instead, personal aggrandizement and politics have played a role in this debate. The Survival Center has won simply because individuals on the EMU Board, deciding whether or not to move the LRO, have not recused themselves from the debate even though they are members of the Survival Center or the groups located in that office space. If this is not a violation of students trust to do what is necessary and right, then I don’t know what is.

Indeed.

In short, the ASUO is full of incompetent individuals who just want to benefit themselves or their particular group. They will frivolously spend your hard earned dollars, while doing nothing to benefit your lives.

He also touches on the elections and his girlfriend Amy DuFour’s recent resignation:

Personal character attacks run rampant in the ASUO. The most recent of which was against Amy DuFour. Although I am tied to her, I believe someone must state something for the record. She had a minor in PPPM. She was representing the AAA department as required under the constitution. She was forced to resign because of political reasons. Jared Axelrod and Stephanie Erickson forced Amy to resign because “she was not representing her constituency”. My question is this: Who are they to determine that she was not representing her constituency? She was approved to run in the Spring by the ASUO Elections Board AND in the fall by ASUO President Adam Walsh. She had served the Student Senate and her constituency with the most up most grace, diligence and honor, which can not be said for other senators. The particular minor in question is represented by no one. If you are part of a department, either through major or minor, you should be able to run and serve that constituency.

[…]

Had Amy had been confronted with this before, she would have resigned then. Instead, they waited until election season to create a story. These individuals never removed Tyrel Love when he was sleeping during senate meetings, nor Jessica Nair who never showed up to meetings during her last few months as senator. Nor have they taken any action against the missed meetings of Senator Brown.

Near the end, he addresses Walsh and Coy directly:

A word of wisdom to Adam and Kyla:
Do something that will actually benefit students. Know what you are doing and why it is important. Do your research before Senate in order to not look like an idiot. Stand your principles. Stand against the Conduct Code provisions because they will hurt all students. Don’t listen to the psycho-babble bullshit the Ad Hoc Committee is giving to the campus community and don’t stand for it. Take a charge against it immediately. Recruit people to go to the meetings where it is discussed and tell administrators that the changes will hurt students. I have lost my faith in your ability to truly lead this campus. People are taking over student government in a pseudo coup-de-tat. They are controlling you and you don’t even realize it. Don’t stand for bullshit from staff and certainly not from senators. While I am grateful for helping you out, I feel as if it was a waste. The promise I was bought into with my vote as been broken.

Quite frankly, I’m shocked. More to come soon, I’m sure. Note that quotes are direct and without any modification.

ASUO Exec
At this time we do not have an endorsement for ASUO President. Personally, I voted for Andy Dolberg and Ben Hartley, but they don’t stand a chance of winning. Once the primary winners are announced we’ll give an endorsement for the general elections.

ASUO Programs Finance Senators
Seat 1, 1-year term: Erica Anderson*, Lisha Menne – On one hand, Anderson established herself as a conscientious PFC members during the OSPIRG hullabaloo: despite having previously worked with the Dirty PIRG, she opposed adding a new Campus Coordinator position to be used for roping more schools in. On the other hand, we’d love to be able to spend time researching Menne’s Facebook pictures. Ultimately, however, our pick is Anderson due to her proven ability to think independently — one of the rarest traits a student leader can have.
Seat 2, 2-year term: Micah Andrew Kosasa*, Erik J. Kaltenbacher – Kaltenbacher’s the clear choice on this one based solely on his voter’s guide statement which expressed a clear, fiscally conservative philosophy. Kosasa, meanwhile, uses his statement to talk about issues which are completely unrelated to the Programs Finance Committee.

EMU Board Finance Senators
Seat 4, 1-year term: Miles Rost, Byanna Mannis* – Rost is the obvious choice in this race. He has significant experience in dealing with budgets and should be fairly consistent and pragmatic on most fiscal issues. He will be a welcome addition to the Senate if elected, if only because he might not rubberstamp every special funding request that comes his way.
Seat 5, 2-year term: Jennifer Lleras* – Since she’s running unopposed, we recommend writing Zach Vishanoff in on this one. Ol’ Vish has quite a bit of experience skulking around the EMU, and the trademark camo and sombrero should keep the other Senators appropriately scared.

Athletic Department Finance Senators
Seat 7, 1-year term: Natalie Kinsey, Jerome T. Roberts, Cassandra Day*, Rachel Dallas – A hard one to choose. Ultimately, we like Cassie Day if only because she promises us that she reads the Commentator regularly.
Seat 8, 2-year term: Kyle McKenzie, Wannita Nualngam* – McKenzie’s pushed the rather silly Classy Fan Behavior campaign this last year, but he’s on the right side of many Senate issues. We don’t have much to go by as far as Nualngam is concerned, but her statement in the voter’s guide was unimpressive, to say the very least.
Seat 9, 2-year term (midterm): Drew Pinson, Andrew Tellio* – We don’t know either of these people and consequently don’t particularly care which is elected. We suggest writing in your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for this one.

Academic Senators
Seat 10, 2-year term: Ashley Sherrick – Sherrick used to be a lacrosse player, so we can only assume her election will lead to horrible, horrible, preppy things. We recommend writing in Pete Sorenson just so we can be sure he won’t take the gubernatorial race.
Seat 11, 2-year term: (midterm) Oscar Guerra* – Seat 11 is the undeclared seat, so in honor of indecision (and uncontested races) we recommend just leaving this one blank.
Seat 12, 2-year term: Jonathan A. Rosenberg* – Another uncontested seat and another slate candidate. If you’ve gotten this far through your ballot without kneeling over, we recommend putting in your own name for this one, just for the self-congratulations, dammit.
Seat 14, 2-year term: Nathan Gulley*, Joel Arellano – We don’t know who Nate Gulley is or what he stands for, but we do know that he looks like a monumental douchebag and enjoys unnecessarily capitalizing words. Vote Arellano.
Seat 16, 2-year term: Ryan Bourdo*, Athan Papailiou – Papailiou cheerily states in precise terms what he’d like to accomplish and mentions that he wishes to control the growth of the incidental fee. Bourdo, meanwhile, needs a haircut.
Seat 17, 2-year term (midterm): Wally Hicks, Jacqueline Justice – We like Hicks. He’s accessible to his constituents and is an intelligent and constructive voice in the Senate. Frankly, we’re surprised that he’s running again since he’d seemed to grow tired of the infighting and inanity of his fellow Senators. Justice may make a good Senator, but because she’s an unknown it’s impossible to recommend her over Hicks.

Associated Student President’s Advisory Committee, At-Large
1 two year term: Christopher Bourn, Shimeon Greenwood*, Manisha Marberry – If their statements in the Voter’s Guide are any indication, the two male candidates are milquetoast at best and babbling idiots at worst. Marberry, meanwhile, gave an impressive statement and is the current Miss Washington County. This is an easy choice.
1 two year term (midterm): Tiffany Schaffeld – Another unopposed candidacy. We recommend writing in Tom DeLay for this position- he needs the cash and will be ready to take one for the whole ASUO team should the need arise.

Student Recreation Center Advisory Board
1 two-year term (vote for three): Brock Kirby, Adam Ohlson, David Cao, Brent Allen Wehage – In this race you’re voting for who you don’t want to win. Since we don’t know any of the candidates, we’re just going to go against Adam Ohlson since he looks a bit like Jefferson from Married with Children. Sorry Adam, but your gigolo ways won’t be tolerated here.

ASUO Programs Finance Committee, At-Large
1 two-year term (midterm): Anna Groundwater, Annie Blomberg* – We don’t know anything about Blomberg except that she is part of the slate and apparently couldn’t be arsed to write a statement for the voter’s guide. Groundwater actually got around to writing a statement, but we were wholly unimpressed by her call for “more protest (sic) and rallies around campus.” How about writing in filmmaker Paul Haggis — not on account of his Academy-Award-winning race parable Crash, but for his under-appreciated work co-creating Walker, Texas Ranger.
1 two-year term: Matthew Rose – Sure, why not?

EMU Board, At-Large
1 two-year term (vote for two): Kerry R. Vance, Lillian Vaughn, Michael McGuffey* – All we ask is that you don’t vote for McGuffey.

Athletic Department Finance Committee, at large (ADFC)
1 year term: Troy David Kalus – Since Kalus is running unopposed, we recommend writing in what sort of campus sports you’d like to see added. Our choice? Rickshaw racing. As long there’s a lax steroids policy it should be fun to watch.

*Denotes member of Jared/Juliana slate.

Dallas and Emily (two parts: 1,2) (39min/19mb)
Daniels and DuFour (11min/5mb)

Jared and Juliana (38min/18mb)
Todd and Jontae (45min/21mb)

Note to next year’s editor: ten minute time limit for all candidates, and half the number of questions.

I just came back from the second ASUO Executive debates. This round was very different from the first. While the debates on Tuesday were held in swanky Gerlinger Lounge, these were in the middle of Hamilton Dining Hall during dinnertime. Only three of the five tickets showed up: Daniels/DuFour and Axelrod/Guzman were both no-shows.
I was unsurprised by their absence. Those two tickets are certainly the front-runners– attending the debate would have only hurt them.

Anyways, my ASUO Executive prediction (which I can only hope is more accurate than my final four predictions):

Daniels/DuFour and Axelrod/Guzman will likely win the primaries, leading to one of the better named matchups in ASUO history: the Double D’s vs. The Axelrod. Unfortunately for Axelrod/Guzman, the losing tickets will rally behind Daniels/DuFour.

Voting turnout: 18.5%

• The ODE has a cornucopia of election-related content this morning (5:30 is too early, wait, late, to be awake):
  • Nick Wilbur’s piece will likely lead, as it contains a synopsis of last night’s debate. Good stuff here: the Dolberg quotes are great. The version that’s online right now is a little rough around the edges copy editing-wise, though.
  • Steve Neuman has what will soon be the annual story about how the ASUO campaigns are using Facebook. Thankfully, Neuman avoids simply regurgitating simple Facebook facts and instead shows how online campaign popularity doesn’t automatically transfer into real votes. Indeed, the Walsh/Coy campaign had a negligible Facebook presence last year. By this logic I’m going to assume that Dolberg/Hartley has a shot.
  • The Emerald also has rather bland Editorial which basically says that they don’t know who they’re going to endorse. Conspicuously absent from their analysis is any mention of Dolberg/Hartley.
  • Their candidate interviews are also now available online.
• Of course, the best thing in the paper is a follow-up to yesterday’s story about the moron who threw a rock through a Taylor’s window. News Editor Jared Paben reassumes his rightful role of Bar Correspondant to report on how Austin Michael Hauth, a UO Political Science major, was apprehended. His mug shot is not to be missed.