Welcome to the Jungle
BY TAMIR KRIEGELAttempting to establish content policy for the upcoming 1998-99 publishing year, the Commentator’s first editorial announced: "This year the Commentator will not focus on student government issues. If the ASUO does ‘something really stupid,’ it will be duly noted in these pages. But we are not going to go out of our way."
Using the power of precedent, under the guise of creating a smoother, more accessible election process, and in the hopes of clarifying the incidental budget fee recommendation to the Oregon University System (OUS), the Executive Office of the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO) has called a Special Election. At best a cry for attention, and at worst a Machiavellian master plan to refund OSPIRG, the 1999 Special Election offers the casual observer a study into the very thin line that separates naiveté from evil, insecurity from overconfidence.
Old friends and new readers, welcome to "something really stupid." Look, we at the Commentator know that a great deal of reporting on student government can be boring, irrelevant, and tiresome--that’s why we’ve shifted our focus away from it. But when a financially powerful group, one that allocates, approves, and manages six million dollars worth of events and programs, sees fit to fiddle with the very element of the democratic process that actually mandates its power and authority--elections--it is the responsibility of even the most apathetic student to sit up and take heed. The 1999 Special Election is corruption at its very finest. Its depravity ranges from special interest control to egregious misuse of power, and when all the dust settles, the student body of this University may find itself taken for over $200,000. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the Oregon Commentator’s triumphant return to the ASUO, as we use interviews, analysis, and research to expose the 1999 Special Election, a.k.a. "something really stupid."
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