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Rearing Its Ugly Head

I was interrupted the other day as I sorted my belongings out in my new room by a knock on the door. I was expecting a friend but was instead greeted by a cheery, rotund face at the door.

“Hello sir!” he boomed in a slightly over enthusiastic voice, smiling with an all-too-mechanical demeanor. I was a little weirded out, until I noticed his polo embroidered with an OSPIRG logo. I promptly ordered him off the property.

Can we put a neighborhood watch out for OSPIRG going door to door?

There’s no telling when OSPIRG will get the message. It’s not that we don’t want to help fight major environmental issues, it’s that we don’t want to waste cash on dinners and gifts. This idea that shoveling money to lobbyists in Salem, and then paying the staff of an organization dedicated to getting that money, sounds far less efficient than any environmental policy, green building, or book buyback program.

And the worst part of it is that I’m not rigidly opposed to the ideas OSPIRG promotes, but it’s not a responsible way to achieve those ends. There must be a way to tell these drones that it’s possible to be environmentally conscious without being a money grubbing douche.

  1. Michael G. says:

    Hey OSPIRG: If the climate wasn’t changing, it’d be the only thing in the known universe that does not change over time.

    Who says it needs mitigation, even if humans are helping it along?

    I’ll be laughing at California as I open the first commercial citrus orchard in Oregon with enough water to actually keep it irrigated!

  2. Andrew says:

    How is OSPIRG’s ballot referendum campaign that flooded the streets with Ospirg employees in the spring not asking students for money?

    I also have seen Ospirg supporters ask students on campus for individual financial donations; however it was not this year. If this is a practice they have stopped doing on campus than I applaud them.

    Everyone knows OSPIRG and the affiliated lobby organization called the Oregon State PIRG have been running door to door fundraising campaigns for years.

    I understand some of the arguments made against OSPIRG arise from conservatives who don’t like a liberal organization- but these same concerns about OSPIRG are voiced by people who traditionally would be OSPIRG

  3. zstarmac says:

    Well, despite the unnecessary personal attacks from the university, I’d like to clear one thing up.
    To my knowledge OSPIRG doesn’t approached students on campus to donate money, there are a few other organizations that do that a lot (Greenpeace, etc). And personally this is the first time my door has ever been knocked on by OSPIRG.
    Every other time they are out on the street trying to engage with students and tell them about whatever they are working on and get them involved. I’ve seen lots of petitions, photo petitions and rallies but I’ve never seen a student be asked to donate money.

  4. Andrew says:

    Matt Patryni said it best in a comment made on this blog-

    “Especially with pseudo-public student dollars, we can

  5. The U of O Students says:

    Zach,
    They provide no service to campus. They leech money, send it back to Portland, which then a small amount comes back to the U. We know this, it’s a fact, it’s been proven.

    You only like OSPIRG because it’s a Progressivist-Marxist wet dream on campus. Take money from students to spend on lobbyists to fuck Oregon over.

    Thank you, Zach, but no thank you. I’d rather you choke on your own pride.

    Sincerely,

    The rest of the university.

  6. zstarmac says:

    From my experience working with them I think that they provide a great service to students and should receive funding.
    How often is a state-wide organization run by students? Where the students say we want to work on X and staff go to work on X. I think that’s an amazing organization and something we should be apart of.
    I’d love to talk to any of you more in depth about your concerns with OSPIRG. I’ll be in Eugene most of the summer, my email is zstarmac at gmail.

  7. calriv says:

    Zach,
    Are you saying that OSPIRG should receive student funding?

  8. zstarmac says:

    Individual action is not enough to mitigate the effects of climate change. We need legislation. And while I do call/write/talk to my representatives I can’t work full time on it. I want someone in Salem and DC who can be there, working for me: writing proposals, doing research and talking to representatives. Because while I can’t be there, oil lobbyists certainly are.
    What is wrong with how OSPIRG runs their organization?

  9. Betz says:

    For those that haven’t been paying attention, I think the case has been made pretty clearly that the problem with OSPIRG isn’t so much the issues that they claim to champion, its the way in which their organization operates in defense of those issues, how they finance their operations, and then try to cover it all up. OSPIRG is untrustworthy and inefficient – those are reason enough to make the case that OSPIRG shouldn’t exist at all.

    You care about the environment? Go plant a tree / recycle / volunteer your time to make the earth and community better … don’t ask me for cash so that you can pay some staffers in another city to posture about how they care about those things (which is pretty much all I can tell that OSPIRG has done, because lets face it – OSPIRG doesn’t back up any kind of empirical data about the success or effects of their operations).

  10. zstarmac says:

    Wow.
    So, you’re not just against OSPIRG getting money from student fees, you’re against them existing at all?
    Also, do you have any evidence of OSPIRG “wasting cash on dinners and gifts”?

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