Not Worthy of 1200 Words
The lush vine that is student government must have Dutch elm disease because yet another of our officials has fallen from the limb unripe. Jennifer Wright, who formerly occupied Athletic Department Finance Seat #9, submitted her resignation last week. This adds her to a long list of heads that have rolled since this year's administration has taken over.The one thing that can be said for Wright's resignation is that it wasn't the result of in-fighting or office politics nor was it motivated by frustration. Rather, Wright re-prioritized and decided that concentrating on scholastics in order to actually graduate and move on with her life was preferable to a year of abuse at the hands of her fellow senators and, of course, us.
The upshot is that while this decision does leave a glaring hole in the midst of a beleaguered Senate, at least Wright didn't try to stick it out only to mess up in a grand fashion later on. The bottom line is that this situation will open the door for either a new appointee who will have the time and energy to do a bang-up job or the joker the Senate will actually bring aboard.
With the Senators and Executive staff dropping like flies, we thought a tally updated to the current round of resignations would be in order. See the sidebar for the running list. Have fun by adding new names as ever more flies end up among the dead on the window sill of student government.
On Tuesday, Oct. 29, vice-president Al Gore appeared at Mac Court with hundreds of high school students, college students and community members, while sharing the stage with Representative Pete DeFazio, Governor John Kitzhaber, Senate Candidate Tom Bruggere, and of course, protesters.
Half a dozen "hippies" began shouting "No Blood and Gore" halfway through Gore's speech, and unfurled a large flag depicting the same slogan, but this time elaborating to indicate a location. The two young people holding the signs were asked to step down from the railing and to behave themselves, and after some discussion, complied. A few others in the audience, however, continued to shout it sporadically, holding up their smaller posters, only to have them covered by defiant audience members wielding Clinton/Gore signs.
Not only were there your standard Chia people protests charging that Gore was single-handedly raping forests, but there were also teamsters outside Mac Court letting everyone know as they came in that unions were not used in setting up the event. Among the protesters was our own fighting Jack, Tristan (a.k.a. Steve) Masat, member of the Insurgent collective and former student government troublemaker.
At some point in the festivities, however, the event organizers came up to the protesters and said, according to Masat, "You're hired. Just put down the signs." Maybe if the Trustafarians had come with little black and white signs and stood out in front of the event with little fanfare, the event organizers would have approached them and said, "We've put the trees back up, now just put down the signs."