ASUO President Amelie Rousseau will likely not be excited to read page two of today’s Oregon Daily Emerald. In a letter from 14 undergraduates, Rousseau’s speech at Convocation was picked apart and shamed as turning a moment of celebration and unity within the University community into an opportunity for the lowest kind of political grandstanding.

According to the group’s account of events, Rousseau first apologized for EPD’s use of tear gas during the riot of two days earlier. “She then took that moment in her Convocation speech to encourage the audience to think critically about allowing the Department of Public Safety to become a full-fledged police department, asserting near-explicitly that the result would be more incidents like that Friday’s” Between this and her comments regarding UO President Richard Lariviere’s plans to separate UO from the rest of the Oregon University System, Rousseau seemed to be doing her best to upstage the Lariviere, the keynote speaker. Come on, Amelie, you can’t beat a hat that classy. Why even try?

Headwear aside, picking a fight over campus politics with the University President at Convocation is distinctly lacking in taste. If Rousseau wanted to rake Lariviere over the coals for his planned changes, I’m sure the ODE would have been happy to provide her the column inches to do so. Instead, she decided to wax poetic about how awful DPS and the UO administration are to a captive audience of people who are hearing about these issues for the first time. A student government president’s speech to freshman should deal with what’s really important for someone about to embark on the adventure of post-secondary education. To Rousseau, that message seems to be “cops are bad.” I don’t know if Rousseau’s performance was  just a side effect of being without her Political Director, Robert D’Andrea, whose resignation had been announced in days prior, or just a lack of any kind of tact on her part, but I, for one, am embarrassed. Apparently at least 14 other students feel the same way.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 14:54 by Rockne Andrew Roll and is filed under ASUO, Government, Miscellaneous, Politics, Stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.