The subject on all your minds: At this point the electoral college results are 254 Bush, 252 Kerry (its 6:30 in the morning). With 270 needed of course for election seems to me things are shockingly close at this point. Everyone is saying Bush has won so I'm guessing the remaining locations are expected to side with him though? Anyway if you can depart from dwelling on the election for a few minutes, its not the subject of this entry, and I'd like your attention because I'm going to be serious here about something real and frightenening thats not the election.
The Conspiracy at UC Davis
ASUCD President Kalen Gallagher recently announced to our Justice Daniel Raff that he opposes all of our proposed judicial reforms, in stark contrast to what he'd told Justice Raff the week before and myself sometime before that. This latest hair-pin turn of policy, combined with his recent inexplicable veto of legislation that would have made it harder to raise student fees and had been supported by an "overwhelming majority" of the ASUCD Senate leaves me with the strong feeling that President Gallagher is no longer making his own decisions.
A certain former commission chair has been telling me about a secret organization called Swords and Sandals, which allegedly includes members of the Administration up to and including the Chancellor, and higher-ups in student government. Basically the theory is that members of S&S gather in secret and talk about how they want to manipulate campus politics and other things within their influence, presumably at the expense of actual student interests (ie it would be their policy to oppose making it harder to raise student fees).
Now I find malevolent secret societies a fun thing to speculate upon in a non-serious manner. I mean, I may deny it later when I'm not being so serious, but I am very close to the two non-serious campus secret societies (ie they invite me on their various expeditions but I never go), Campus Crusade for Chaos & Confusion and Students for an Orwellian Society. But when it comes to actually believing conspiracy theories I usually draw the line.
before our court meeting, in informal discussion regarding President Gallagher's inexplicable behavior, I mentioned S&S. One justice responded that he'd heard of it before, and another proceeded to tell a story about his former roommate Brian McInnis.
Before I get into the story of Brian McInnis, however, I want to further lay out the background evidence of S&S's existence. I did a search on google for several combinations of the words "swords," "sandals," "ASUCD," "Davis," and "UC Davis" and came up with three results. (1) UC Davis provost Virginia Hinshaw in a listing of "major / keynote presentations" she has done lists "Swords and Sandals, Davis, CA" in 2002 (source). (2) A page about UC Davis facility reservation policies lists under policy 270-16 "Occasional fund-raising on University property is permitted for the following groups with the prior approval of the Director of CEVS. Funds raised must be donated to or used by a service, charitable, or education organization registered with the IRS. (A) Campus Interest Groups (ex. Swords and Sandals); (B) Non-University Organizations (ex. Davis Chamber of Commerce)" (source)
Finally the only other reference to the organization that I could find anywhere on the web is (3)in a humorous article written for the "UC Davis Magazine" (itself basically a ploy to get alumni to donate wads of cash) six years ago. I recommend reading the article if you've got a minute and are interested in some other unanswered questions about Davis (notably a cal trans conspiracy theory).
So: Brian McInnis. I haven't been following his odious ASUCD career too closely and in general I don't pay much attention to the "advocacy units" but I believe he originated somewhere in either "City / County Affairs" or "State & National Affairs." There very early on and from a position of relative unimportance he made his mark by ingratiating himself to city council members at the expense of ASUCD (I believe telling them bad things about the mentality of the rest of ASUCD so that they'd see him as "their man" in ASUCD, which was naturally detrimental to the relationship of the rest of ASUCD with the city). Other early impressions were that he was the most manipulative and generally smarmy individual since ASUCD Senator Lee Weissman (now a used car salesman, no joke). Anyway I believe he was eventually put in charge of State & Nat'l Affairs (under the Gallagher administration incidently, which I thought at the time was unexpected because the impression I was under was that he was universally hated), and was the author of a record number of resolutions expressing endorsement for political candidates and propositions (all of which, it turns out, were illegal and hence ASUCD's current IRS investigation). Later on however, a new position was created specifically for McInnis, the name of which unfortunately currently escapes me, which basically puts BOTH City/County & State & Nat'l under him, giving him an unprecedented amount of authority. This is his current position.
McInnis is the exact opposite of someone one would want representing their organization to outside parties. He falls over himself in his rush to ingratiate himself to any political figure outside of ASUCD. Instead of taking ASUCD issues to these external figures he directly takes on whatever issue THEY want and advocates it within ASUCD. Altogether he is the ideal tool of S&S, and that relationship would explain his rise to power in the face of general loathing from student government members.
As to President Gallagher, he's not eager to sell out ASUCD like McInnis is, but I think he's extremely ambitious and somewhat unscrupulous. I won't subject you with a second ASUCD biography in this entry but to highlight Gallagher's ambition I'd like to note that, former president of his HS' ASB, he emailed all the then-current ASUCD senators the summer before he first arrived at Davis. I met him on my first day here a few days before school started and he handed me his business card. He didn't even have a job but he had a business card. He ran for senate his first quarter (as did I - we're the same year) on Lee Weissman's Untie Unite slate (Weissman later related that Gallagher had told him "you can have me on your slate, or not, but either way I'm going to run and I'm going to win").
I have never seen Gallagher get behind an issue except for the sake of getting behind an issue (as opposed to actually believing in the issue). As such S&S has exactly as much influence over him as he perceives it to be in his aspiring political interests to cooperate with them; and I think they recently made him a tantalizing offer.
Anyway, if you've read all the above I really appreciate it. I needed to get this conspiracy off my chest as it were. I hope you understood all that, I tried to make it understandable to those not familiar with the inner workings of UC Davis or ASUCD. If anyone here has anything further to share on the subject of Swords and Sandals I'd be greatly appreciative.
PS: Its 8:30am now and apparently Kerry just informed Bush that he will concede at 1pm EST (10am here?). You've probably heard that already, but if you're hearing it here first, EMOSNAIL is proud to be on the cutting edge of the news.
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