Guilty As Sin

In The Flat Hat today, it seems that a mere apparent cover-up of a small amount of meaningless graft by the former SA President can be solved by a (thus far non-forthcoming) apology. I of course refer to the scandal now embroiling 404 Jamestown Road involving SA VP Zach Pilchen's THEFT (since he made no intention of paying it back unless he got caught) of $140 of the PEOPLE'S MONEY. (Aside: ALL GOVERNMENT FUNDS ARE THE PEOPLE'S MONEY, whether they were collected as tax (mandatory student fees) or independently raised. The people (students) are the government (SA). Thus any holdings of the government are holdings of the people. End aside) No, in the eyes of the sages at the allegedly non-political FH, mere "reflection" on his fitness will suffice. Wrong answer. The Japanese have a ritual in which disgraced public figures come before the press, deliver a public apology, bow, and resign in shame. This seems appropriate for Mr. Pilchen, who never had confusion with the debit card before April, but then mysteriously managed to give himself at least seven illicit liquidity advances between April and God-knows-when. And then not tell anyone about it. And apparently "misplace" the receipts. Of course, TFH's editors are far more ethically concerned than Pilchen himself, who has (thus far) neither made restitution (source: TFH) nor apologized, preferring to "gauge student response" before coming clean. Shame on him. Shame on us for electing him and Hopkins (who may be innocent of any wrongdoing, BTW) with a 50 per cent margin. But we can't possibly be faulted, since no hardworking Obama supporter could possibly engage in graft that would have made Spiro Agnew (Nixon's VP for the historically illiterate) sure he had a new protege.

FP/YC Ruling:
Straight Red, Life ban.


UPDATE: He resigned effective 1730 9/02. Source: VIO

Not a Catastrophe

So Matt Beato has now lost the race for City Council. I will now determine what this means, what this doesn't mean, what I would like to have, and what I don't know.

What This Means

• The Three-Person Rule will remain unresolved: Councilman Freiling, who supports reform of the rule, won re-election by wide margins. However, former mayor Granger lost narrowly to highly anti-reform candidate Judy Knudson. This means that the rule will remain in limbo for the next couple of years at least, as the council will be divided among pro-reform and anti-reform elements who will not view the rule as central to their governance.
• City noise regulations will favor non-students: The turnout by non-students was high enough to counter any student bloc vote, and thus rulings will still be made in favor of the more numerous non-students.
• Limousines and identity politics are not the best response to perceived marginalization in city politics: Forgetting the sheer waste of student funds that providing stretch limousines was (student activities vans do the same job for much less), it is now clear that an identity-based campaign for a council seat is insufficient. Regardless of the number of students registered, the citizens of Williamsburg will have a plurality of votes. Thus, putting forward a student candidate heavily dependent on the fickle student turnout profile (see limousines) is not going to be a winning formula unless the candidate is capable of appealing to citizen voters on the issues on which they move their votes: property taxes and schools. Perhaps Sievers was more able to do this in 2006 when he ran, or he may have had a larger proportion of anti-incumbent voters than Beato in this cycle. This election shows that the 157-vote defeat in an election without student votes that Sievers sustained was a fluke, as Beato lost by a larger margin in an election with more favorable demographics.

What This Doesn't Mean:

• The City Council can ignore student concerns: They can't for the same reason they couldn't before the election: We can vote still. Depending on the turnout model one uses, anywhere from 30-60 percent of registered student voters turned out. For young voters in any non-presidential election, these figures are actually rather high! As student political thinking matures (go figure first go-round we'd screw it up), if these turnouts remain the same students will be able to carry the balance in some races. What this election shows is that students cannot elect a candidate. Students can and ought to, however, enter coalitions with candidates friendly to their interests. This can get student opinion on Council, as was the case with Freiling.

What I'd Like to Have:

• An exit poll! It would make all this speculating a whole lot more certain. As it stands, nobody really knows anything, not even how many students voted. After-the-fact surveys, especially those conducted by the annoying folks at Rock the Vote (STOP TEXTING ME GODDAMNIT), will surely be subject to social desirability bias, distorting crucial findings which would affect future student political action strategies.
• Specifically, information on under-voting: Compared to the 2006 City Council elections, there were 1907 "whole ballots" (total votes/seats available) in the '08 race versus 1748 "whole ballots" in '06. Did students go to the polls for Beato alone, or only two candidates? Surely some did, but how many? For whom did they vote? Could this practice have gifted Knudson a seat? Wanna-be Michael Barones need to know!

What I Don't Know

• What the loss does to the Flat Hat: The paper had been a big booster of the Beato candidacy and likely will blame low student turnout (which I do not believe was the case) for the defeat. Will this affect readership?
• What the deal with the limos was: When I take up my position with the Informer in the fall, I intend to rip Valerie Hopkins et al. a new one for spending my money on limousines to get out the vote for Beato. That is, of course, for another day.
• What Beato does now: Other than sitting on the Soil and Water Conservation board (it's easy to win when no one runs!), it is unclear what Beato will do in wake of the defeat, as he had previously resigned his position as SA Senate Chairman. I do not know if he holds a Senate seat still.

Fair Play/Yellow Card: Now Biweekly!

There's been a lot of good, solid, fucking up by the Estates General this week, so here are the midweek's bookings.

Fair Play:

1. The BOV-denied green fee action. Well done.

Yellow Card:

1. The Flat Hat-for the hit piece on John Foubert. The founder of One-in-Four was attacked in a very poorly written front-page-below-the-fold article on Tuesday that did not address the supposed reason for writing it. The piece was written in a backhanded attempt to discredit Foubert and secure support for the SA's mixed gender sexual assault prevention program.


2. The SA-spent your money on the Lips female sexuality magazine. Now, I don't suppose I could get funding for W*nker, the single male bachelor's sexuality magazine. Not that I would try or anything; I'm just trying to illustrate the absurdity of the thing. Your absurdly high student fees at work.
   

Sent Off: Second Bookable Offence

1. The Flat Hat-the Friday issue was unmitigated shit. Whether it was the unusually asinine Confusion Corner column, the pejorative use of the term "conservative" in their staff editorial, or the self-congratulatory "pat on the back" to readers of Mr. Pieprenbring's column, this Friday's issue earned a vote of no confidence from your haughty correspondent. In punishment for your week of FAIL, humanity fines you Z$100 (<$.01).

Straight Red

1. The "Sadler Celebration": My God, ten people sitting in a circle handling themselves would be less of a circle-jerk than the five minutes of that I sat through. Had Sadler been the center of attention, had the emcee not spent his time massaging the egos of the student organizations, had Sadler given a rally-the-troops, my-god-this-is-a-great-place-thanks-for-the-memories speech (which he might have, later, after all 150 spectators not participating left in disgust), there might have been the dignity I expected. Had the "parade of banners" consisted of the banner-carriers escorting Sadler on his ceremonial walk around campus, it may have had dignity. But it didn't. Madame President Hopkins, since you are the captain of the SA's ship, humanity holds you responsible for the EPIC FAIL in the amount of Z$200 (<$.01).

"NO!" on March 20

Been a long time.

Today marks the beginning of my Quixotic campaign to defeat the "green fee" that will be imposed by referendum March 20. The issue that motivates my advocacy is not "global warming denial" or "hating the planet" but rather a love of freedom and skepticism of bureaucracy. The fee would create a new environmental office and a "green endowment" in addition to retrofitting academic buildings and residence halls with energy monitoring tools. I do not believe that a school as deeply in financial uncertainty as ours needs a new bureaucracy. I do not believe that any endowment, green or otherwise, should be funded by mandatory student fees. This is only the beginning of my criticism; more will follow in the coming days.

I will now criticize the arguments the proponents expound in presenting their tax as inoffensive:

1. The fee is 1% of the mandatory student fee: This statistic is true. However, there is no guarantee that the fee, once created, will not increase. It seems from the proponents' own website that, at least in the beginning, there will be some unfunded proposals. This seems to suggest that there will be a revenue shortfall: in the present financial situation of the College, this suggests that the fee will only grow. The proposal is counting on the "green endowment" covering the shortfall. This counts on a critical uncertainty; namely, that governments will, in a time of economic recession and possible stagflation, continue to subsidize environmentalist projects to the degree they do at present. This seems unlikely, as calls for immediate relief would drown out calls for "sustainability." These subsidies are the lifeblood of the environmental firms in which the endowment would presumably invest: if they cease, the firms will cease, and the cover of the shortfall will cease.
2. There is massive support: Also true. However, there is currently no one willing to stand in dissent, for "Who hates the planet?" There is only one side of the debate that has spoken, and that side has defined terms, so it makes sense that a vast majority would support such fees. However, tyranny of the majority is tyranny all the same. Add in the 800-pound gorilla of SEAC, and, well, maybe it's garden-variety tyranny after all. Unfortunately, some organizations that might stand up to such clear earmarking and (student) government waste seem to be content to stand silent.

Again, this is not to say that if the SA or the administration belives that recycling or energy efficiency (on campus) can be improved by their action that they should do nothing. Both of these are noble goals, but nothing is free. In addition to nothing being free, things tend to cost more when implemented than when estimated. I would much rather see the administration doing its job than the students compelled to surrender their wallets at a referendum. Let the people in charge set the fees, not the students.

Oh, and if the referendum does fail, I will demand a recount (apologies to the late William F. Buckley).