ASUCD Dramafest Winter 2007 Part I: Intro
For over a year now I've been predicting that this quarter's ASUCD election would be particular drama filled, and so far it seems to be shaping up as expected. Despite not being there, I intend to report on it, and I believe it will be interesting to even those who have no involvement or interest in ASUCD. So I invite you not to dismiss upcoming entries on the subject because you're not involved in it, but rather to look forward to reading about the drama filled and often petty antics that people will participate in in a contest that really doesn't mean much in the scheme of things. Whats at stake: titles mostly (for citation on grad/law school applications), also egos, and to a lesser extent, control of which irrelevent units in ASUCD will be favoured for the next year, and to a completely fictional extent1, a $9.3 million budget and a fleet of busses.
The Teams
There are two parties, or "slates," that have dominated ASUCD politics for years, they are Lead & Focus. ASUCD tends to fluctuate between them every two years, being dominated by one with a minimal presense by the other. For the last two years Lead has dominated ASUCD, to the point that many people who would have identified with Focus otherwise simply said they were Leadites to get by. This has led to several prominant defections from Lead to Focus leading up to this election, such as both the Focus VP candidate and campaign manager (former Senate President Pro Tempore Jon Sanders & Comptroller2 Savaree-Ruess, respectively).
This has lead to the ironic situation of the Focus campaign being run from the executive offices, despite the fact that Lead is currently the executive incumbant. This is because the Comptrollership is an executive appointed position (with an office), and at the time the appointment was made Kai was successfully pretending to be a member of the Lead party (by wearing a red shirt constantly like the rest of them no doubt).
And there are still others with a confused alignment. For example the Lead VP candidate is a relative ASUCD unknown who seems to have more in common with Focus than Lead.
The Cold War
So far the two main parties have done most of their dirty fighting through two minor parties that serve as proxies.
Lead: There is F.U.C.K.E.D., intentionally running off and without permission of the popular former F.U.C.K. slate, which is allegedly controlled by Lead (specifically, my sources name Andrew Peake as the puppet master. You may remember him as a witness and cause of Case 34, because he had caused the impeachment hearing against Comptroller Savaree-Ruess to remain closed to the public over the latter's objections, and the day before that he'd gotten in a violent confrontation with the same).
Focus: On the other hand, ACT and the infamous Christian Slate are allegedly controlled by Focus, though these two apparently recently were assimilated entirely into Focus.
These respective proxy slates have been visciously going at it, both against eachother and their opponent's mother-slates. Rececntly former F.U.C.K.E.D. candidate David Poole has confessed to being behind an anonymous account that was rumour-mongering on the Focus page. His confession is believed to be intended to shield continuing candidates and Lead officers from suspicion in the incident, but did not appear to have any remorse regarding the incriminating information he had spread with malicious intent in reckless disregard of the truth.
And so, as you can see, this promises to be an exciting election filled with drama.
Breaking News
Due to the extremely long delay between the posting for open positions and hiring of new justices to the Court (the process dragged on over a quarter), though 20 people had at one time applied, only four were still waiting around to show up when they finally held interviews, and three were hired. Note that the Court has no control over this hiring process (and hence its not a primary interest of those who ARE responsible) and something probably should be changed to prevent this from happening in the future. Anyway, one of the Justices left a vacancy on a commission which caused the Christian Slate's Steven Ostrowski, to be moved up from alternate to full commissioner. Which means for the first time he, the most hated person in ASUCD, is in a position he could be removed from by closed session (and it also means that at the moment he has a more successful ASUCD career than Paul "Still waiting for a position" Harms).
And conveniently he has also just givin everyone a good reason! Apparently3 he emailed Senate stenographer ("recorder") Bobby Gray saying he would drop the case he had filed against him if Gray provided him with the minutes and allowed him to "reform" them (?!).
Good times. On a related note, I know those of you involved are going to run to the court saying that this has some effect on the case. As far as I can tell it does not, so spare my justices your drama unless you can find a relevant motion in the FRCPs. Note also, that the Court has not yet published its decision on accepting or rejecting the relevant case (Case 36).
Picture of the Day - And Now For Something Completely Different
Me firing an AR-15 assault rifle!
(Its only a matter of time before the Winter 2007 ASUCD Election spreads to full scale civil war!)
I put several other new pictures up on Flickr today.
Footnotes
1 I say "fictitious because the overwhelming majority of the budget, and in particular the important things like the Unitrans bus system or the Coffee House, is not tinkered with by the Senate. They could theoretically do so but they usually have no illusions that those more directly involved are more qualified to adjust the budgets. That and last time they tinkered with the Coffee House, it went on strike.
2 The comptroller is actually called the "Controller," but I use "comptroller" because it describes the position a lot better than a term that also applies to people that fly radio controlled airplanes.
3 Note that this information was posted by the aforementioned purveyor of intentional lies, David Poole. The information about the exchange appears to be true, but the information that a closed session has already been called appears to be false.