aggienaut | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When we were doing Court interviews, it struck me as odd that only 3 applicants responded to an email sent to 20 people. (One of the applicants showed up without scheduling an interview, it was quite odd.) Now that I think about it, I seem to recall some issues with notifying people about Court interviews last week too. I wonder if all 20 applicants actually got the email?

I also find it funny when a certain ASUCD official feigns a desire to actually get a full Court...after Court interviews were cancelled and not rescheduled for an entire quarter.

It would be useful to verify if the e-mail addresses that the interview times were sent to are correctly spelt. Last time I was told that my Chairman interview was being rescheduled I realised that one of the names on the list was improperly spelled.

You forgot about me doing the No campaign executive for Unitrans, if I succeed and I will, ASUCD will have a fit with me.

FYI ..KAI was NEVER LEAD ..NEVER...he was always FOCUS

It should be noted that the efforts to prove it was in fact David Poole who wrote the allegations on the Student Focus page did not succeed, and he could have easily been covering for the actual writer.

This is going to be good, and endorsements oh my!

Yeah, I am going to check all of the computers soon and search for evidence.

How about you first finish your plantiff brief for case 37.

First of all searching for evidence is more fun, and second I can't begin to write my plantiff brief until I have successfully kidnapped my main witness.

Let's not forget R.E.S.P.E.C.T. - the coolest named of the proxy slates. Though, I do wonder how much this war is being led by the Megapowers, and how much by the proxiers. The upcoming ASUCD Court War that the Emperor spoke of certainly seems more of a CDP production than one by Focus or Lead.

I thought about mentioning "Respect" in a tangent about how it has been discovered that making your name an acronym causes it to always be written in caps (which I consider to be a cheap trick and hence have always refused to write "Lead" in all caps), but ultimately the one person slate and Ostrowski's many more random antics don't effect the big picture.

As to the so-called "Court War," I think thats an extremely innaccurate characterization. One may file as many cases as they want, but ultimately one's opponent need only fear the mistakes they themselves made. "War" makes it seem like the person who puts the most effort in most effectively will win, and everyone better take it seriously; I have faith that through the ASUCD Court system only those who deserve to lose will lose (and even so, "they" won't lose themselves, so much as only the bad practices will be changed).

Davis has it's own wiki?! awesome!

I <3 emosnail.

-Paul "paid by the hour" Harms

ACT was never a serious group, the one potential candidate, Bleckman, had always wanted to run with Student Focus, but they turned him down and even kicked him off as an admin to their facebook group...Spencer had made him an admin, as he was spencer's intern.

As stated above, Kai was never LEAD, he never said he was. He had stated in the past that he was non-political or neutral. Kai ran with focus initially because he didn't like LEAD. After he lost he wasn't much a part of SF, until he became IAC chair. After that, Herold took more notice in him and began haning out with him, and as many say "began poisioing his mind". After he became controller, Herold really took interest and Kai, Eric Fox and Herold became fast friends, as well as, strong opponenets to LEAD.

The ACT-SF alliance is more of a tactic than an agreement of ideas. SF wants to win the presidency, thus they run more senate candidates, and ACT aka Ostrowski and Bleckman, want to feel like they are a part of something with influence. However, Bleckman and Webb, bring nothing to the table that SF doesn't already have, in fact they may take stuff away. Ostrowksi has no sway over the conservative vote and in fact the one ASUCD official who does, Danielle Vaticano from Lobby Corps is angry with SF for posting cuts to Lobby Corps on one of their candidates facbooks groups...James Adams who is Spencer's younger bro in Theta something. Danielle is heavily invovled in DCR, which will mostly likely mean a DCR vote for LEAD, again.

Actually, I was approched by Student Focus about running shortly after the Fall Elections. I initially turned them down because based upon the slates lead and Focus ran in the Fall elections, I felt that it would be best to not run with them, for by not running with them I figured focus would recruit another good candidate to take my place. My primary interest is not personal gain, but rather having the best possible student government for the UCD undergrad population. Once they decided to give more than six candidates the option of running with them, however, my main reasoning for not running with them was no longer an issue.

ASUCD Dramafest Winter 2007 Part I: Intro

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Communication Discrepencies

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Proxy War

Re: Proxy War

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