The Agrinautica

Vendettas
   On further reflection, and with the support of Matty, I would agree that perhaps Matty and Leathers should be swapped putting Leathers as the most exemplary person in the known history of ASUCD.

   Additionally, I'd like to address the fact that when I criticize officials for behaviour I don't approve of, there has frequently been a response of you just have a vendetta against them!! Do not confuse me disapproving of actions with me allegedly not liking someone because of their actions and therefore being too biased to comment on their actions (!?).
   But moreover, who do I have a vendetta against? Well if I have a vendetta against anyone, its probably Oliver Cromwell, since he's been dead some 350 years but still comes up three times in my list of shadiest people in ASUCD. (= Otherwise, I'll admit I have kind of a pretend vendetta against Paul Harms. But if I WERE to have a real vendetta against someone, it would probably be Sara Henry. I'm pretty sure she had a vendetta against me anyway, and tried to impeach me twice. Note, however, that I ranked her appx 23rd most shady. This is because in my opinion trying to axe someone because you have a vendetta against them is less abusive than trying to axe people merely because they disagree with you. Anyway, as evidenced by my relatively not-bad ranking of Henry, I do not have a vendetta against her and I'd be interested in hearing arguments as to why I have more reason to have a vendetta against anyone else.


   7 of 9 people yesterday voted that they thought I was more associated with Lead than Focus .. you guys forget I was a Focus appointee, hah! (but really I am solidly of no party) Also 10 of 10 of you said you expected more Focus than Lead on the list, whereas I counted 7 Lead and 3 Focus on it. But then again, none of you remember how Lead used to be.


That Which is Not Sanctioned is Forbidden
   Someone brought my attention to an Aggie article today about how the Gofers have been pushing definitions of soliciting in the dorms. But I find what they did not as comment worthy as these comments about it:
"They have every right to go out and talk about ASUCD, but they should have gone through the appropriate avenues by talking to the executive office and president," said Kevin Powers, chief of staff for the executive office.

"[GO] never contacted the executive office about ASUCD outreach," said ASUCD Controller Paul Harms.

   Fortunately this reporter knew to ask the right questions:
However, Powers also noted that slates are not required by ASUCD bylaws to inform the executive office of their ASUCD outreach activities.

"We're under no obligation to inform LEAD about everything we do," Friedman said

   Seriously though, since when do members of Congress have to get George W Bush's permission to do outreach? (Maybe Harms should intern for the white house to give them some ideas)


Endorsements
   Now that I can, several people have approached me about endorsing student government candidates. Several people and Steve Ostrowski several times. Anyway, I have found a candidate I would like to endorse:

( Endorsement-Like Statements! )

   Daviswiki officially has the Aggie's pictures of the upcoming ASUCD presidential candidates up before the Aggie does, such sauce!


   Today user "SenateScandal" started commenting again on the contentious "Budget Hearing Scandal" (which I believe had been deleted previously). This time the situation became even more apocalyptic than before, with user "DPSforLife" eventually posting serious incriminations against most of the members of Senate (note, anonymous names such as these are extremely rare). Just a FEW of these allegations (quoted verbatim) are (and keep in mind I make no claims whatsoever on the veracity of any of these):

• Former Senator Sean Ruel is a former drug dealer, has used steroids, beat his former girlfriend, and snorted cocaine on regular occasions.

   So yesterday I'm standing outside the Ralph Nader speaking event talking to noted republican George Andrews when on the subject of politics someone I don't know says to me "you're an anarchist aren't you?" Then aggie reporter Stan Obklobzija asked me if I knew where rabid communist John Green¹ was and if I had anything to do with the Nader event.

¹If you could cross communism with rabies, John Green would have it.

   Former ASUCD President Sara Henry accused me of being a member of the green party in a newspaper interview, the ASUCD Ethnic & Cultural Affairs Commission once discussed whether or not I'm a republican. I dunno somehow it just seems to me to be very unclassy to clearly belong to a particular political stereotype. Anyway, time for a poll:

[Poll #365251]
[Poll #365252]


Entertainment Council
   Also we had an entertainment council meeting yesterday. I was actually given another title to add to my collection - I was declared to have the glorious title of "head grip."
   Also while brainstorming bands we want to bring to campus I plugged Momsex. The rest of you should help bring the ingenius creators of Zombies v Pirates to our campus by telling blushbystander how awesome they are over and over again.

("Now with 29% more blog!")

Making News Again
   THIS article about me in the aggie tomorrow (Thursday) is not altogether pleasing to me. I got rather the impression that the reporter, having already talked to Sara Henry and Paloma Perez, was already rather hostile towards me, the court, the cases, and the green party, before talking to me. I hoped that after sitting through a Court meetings and seeing that we were nice people she would soften towards us, but apparently not.

   Article Summary: Paloma Perez & Sara Henry expressed to the aggie their intention to question my ability to be unbiased on Case # 24. To avoid controversy I have removed myself from that case.

   When I first got the email monday that the aggie wanted to take my picture for an article, I knew it wasn't going to be a good thing. Over the course of the week I became more concerned about this, particularly once it was confirmed that the whole thing was about whether or not I should sit on the case.

   Court meetings always cheer me up though. I get piles of crap from everyone about court stuff, and then I finally meet with the other justices, all of whom have stood together in every major decision of my administration. It was very nice to hear them joking about how they won't be able to do cases without me and if I ever was removed they'd all resign in protest. I was hoping the respect the court members have for me would have some effect on the reporter, but apparently she was unphased by it.
   Also I agreed to do the administrative work to put on Case # 24, even though I won't be party to it. It would have been nice to get out of it, but I just cannot picture the case being put on adequately without my involvement. I'd like to work on training others to do that though so that when I'm gone things don't fall apart.

   Yesterday was the quarterly State of the Court address at ASUCD Senate.
   I'm told that while I was reading our verdict from recent case # 23, President Sara Henry was grimacing hatefully. A number of the City Council candidates happened to be at the meeting, including former ASUCD Senator (from 1997), current UCD grad student & Aggie humor columnist Lamar Heystek. He told me that in his seven years of involvement in ASUCD he has never seen a Court that "could write Opinions like that."
   Most disturbing of all though, Heystek informed me that he had filed a case in the fall of 2002, which never went anywhere. Apparently the then Chief Justice (Katarina something) never returned any emails or phone calls... no response from the Court could be gotten at all. This is what I'm talking about when I say that the Court did NOT exist as a functioning entity previous to this. I wonder if his case is still pending.


   Also I just learned from a former Elections Committee member that last election they were considering compelling evidence that if accepted could disqualify the "Student Focus" candidates from the election, & ASUCD Advisor Vicki Swett told them not to accept the evidence because it would "create drama and controversy." This former committee member said they felt that what occured was very wrong but were unable to do anything about it because the hearing was confidential and they were thus forbade from talking to the Aggie or writing a case. Now that they're not on the Elections Committee they'd like to do something about it, but all evidence is still confidential and most witnesses are still on the committee. I am going to investigate legal recourses.


   Real update will come soon.


NOTE TO SELF: check one more time to make sure this is friends only

Dear ASUCD Senators & Officers,
   Since I know a great many of you will read this entry I will take the opportunity to address you while I have your attention. I feel a really didn't testify very well this time so I thought I'd say some things I didn't get a chance to.
   At the request of a Senator I have removed a number of recent entries from the public sphere. You have probably seen them already as circulated during my hearing, but if you have not yet seen them and would like to, ask me and I will show you a physical copy regardless of whether I have reason to expect you aspire to incriminate me. By now even those of you most opposed to me must be realizing that I have an absolute dedication to the truth.
   ( Click here for full text of address )

   Last week I had four midterms and an ASUCD Senate Hearing. Consequently I wasn't very abundant last week.
   Then I chaired for CCCMUN conference on Friday and Saturday, that experience is detailed here.

   As regards the Senate hearing, I had terminally pissed off the ASUCD President, Sara Henry so she had the Senate consider my removal as head of the Court.
   Unfortunately in calling for a removal hearing on someone the plaintiff does not need to make any specific charges against the defendant in order to hold the hearing, something which quite obviously is not in keeping with long-standing theories of western law ("cause of action"). So I did not know the charge until I arrived there. Removal hearings are by default closed hearings, but I motioned for it to be public. I fear not the truth.
   Rather than make a strong case against me, President Henry opted to try for sheer number of charges, and charged me with everything she could possibly concieve of, coming up with I think about a dozen extremely poor cases against me.
   The obvious response to this mongolion horde strategy was simply to similarly show a large number of valid rebuttals, and thoroughly refuted each claim.
   Definitely the highlight of my day was the result of the "notification" line of arguments. In cases before the ASUCD Court one must notify the campus media 3 days in advance of the case, its time and location, among other things. In Case #21 earlier this quarter, I had notified them of everything except the location, as it had not yet been set. The Defendant cited that as a reason why the case should be dismissed, and even though it was obviously immaterial because an Aggie reporter was present, we sustained the objection and dismissed the case. Miss Henry declared that that was a sign of incompetence and ignorance of the codes on my part. In response I pointed out that she had not notified ME of the very hearing we were then in in a correct manner, as I'd never been telephoned as it says I must be in the Codes. I was quite explicit that I did not wish for the hearing to be dismissed on those grounds however. I didn't need to look over at her to know that she was immediately mortified by the revelation. The case went on and eventually the Senate dismissed everyone so they could deliberate.. then they reopened the hearing from deliberations because Miss Henry wished to testify again. She proceeded to argue that since I was clearly present and clearly had known of the hearing, that the fact that I was incorrectly notified was not significant. This of course was just walking straight into the argument I had earlier made. So in my rebuttal to that I reiterated that I had NOT been asking for the case to be dismissed, I was merely making a point, and by the exact same logic Miss Henry had just brought up, the Court hearing should not have been dismissed. Considering that altogether she was accusing ME of not being sufficiently respectful of the Codes, that whole argument tremendiously favored me.

   Also she claimed the email I'd sent her was "threatening." After she read the email the Senate was like "uhh," and Senator Menezes asked "what exactly is threatening about that email?"

   I can't wait until I get the official transcript, which hopefully will be available tomarrow. I look forward to working with Miss Henry in the future. Not too enthusiastic about seeing government advisor Vicki Swett though, because while she no doubt is equally enthusiastic about removing me and destraught over the failure to do so, unlike Henry, Swett will pretend to be my best friend when next I see her. Sickening.

   The final vote went along party lines I believe. It was 7-4-1, I'm guessing 7 Focus votes for my removal, with one abstention, and four Lead votes for my retention (President Henry belongs to the Focus party of course).

The Aggie Article Regarding the Same! By "could not be reached for comment," they mean no effort was made to do so. They had my phone number and I recieved no phone call. I think bashing the aggie is over-rated (The government officials do it whenever they are mentioned, and no doubt will find reason to do so in response to this as well), but I would have appreciated it if they really had made an effort to contact me.

So this weekend I went on the ASUCD Leadership retreat to Tahoe. Then I came back and wrote this entry. Then after it was nearly done I tried to click back to it from an aol dialogue box, accidentally hitting "livejournal FAQ," which opened a new page, and the whole entry was lost. I am now in a very very bad mood. You will now get the I-already-wrote-this-once version. )=Nadia and Shemek (a third unitrans manager was with us as well).
   "We should seperate the driver from the rest of us so we're all technically in the trunk and can drink!" - Elections Committee Chair Mary Ball. Needless to say, we drank anyway.*
   There were 16 people on the bus up. The politicians and government officers chatted happily, while the commercial unit managers sat in awkward silence.
   Up at tahoe we had three condoes, declared the main one, the quiet one, and the late night one. I of course immediately declared sovreignty over the loft of the latter.
   That first night we all partied like whoa. It was pretty cool. Chief of Staff Behzad (last name?) is a party animal. Then we went to the hot-tub. Security chased us out but told us we should go to the more secluded one at the other end of the complex. Yea. "what happens in the hot-tub STAYS in the hot-tub" Unfortunately some keys stayed in the hot tub as well...
   After walking back, Public Opinion Polls Committee chair Russ Fagely realized he had lost his wallet. Simulteniously I realized I had lost a key. So we retraced our steps.. eventually found a key in the hot-tub. It was for building 483 though and I was definitely in 484. Psha on that. Russ eventually tracked down his wallet.. and eventually I discovered that I had in fact originally been given a 483 key. So it all fit together.

   The next day we did various team-building excercises most of the day. A large flow chart of the ASUCD heirarchy was unveiled ("now you can see how we're all connected... OTHER than on friendster.com!" -ASUCD President Sara Henry).. and it was prominently missing the Supreme Court!! I immediately got another peice of butcher paper, wrote "STUDENT COURT" really big with sharpie, and put it in the approprate position (level with "senate" and "president" on the top level).
   I was very very disappointed to learn that "ASUCD Refridgeration Services" does NOT operate vast room-sized industrial walk-in refridgerators at some secret location on campus. Vice President Kalen Gallagher agreed with me that they SHOULD do this, stating "I sense a senate bill coming up!"
   We also had a workshop on "diversity training." "how many of you have been professionally objectified for money."

   That night the prevailing opinion was that we should go to the casinos to eat, and then come back and proceed with the getting drizunk. That turned into gamble until we're seated at the restaurant in harrahs, eat, and eventually gamble the rest of the night. I don't gamble, so this wasn't my preferred turn of events.
   A few of us managed to pass the time beforehand by searching for alcohol. The casino of course had some.. at an exorbitant price. Finally we found a gas station two blocks down that was fully stocked (As opposed to the closer one with none), and Jenna in her frenzy for alcohol didn't even see the large "alcohol liscense suspended!" signs. No alcohol there for us. Finally we found some at a grocery store a little further on.
   After we ate I managed to escape the casinos before too long. But not before the somewhat drunk manager of Special Transportation Services (STS) and Tipsy Taxi asked me: "I'm sorry if I'm a bit blunt right now but... you dress different from everyone else, don't you." I don't know I thought that was funny.
   So yea. KDVS Director Teresa, executive staff Event Coordinator Jenna Zelman and I caught a shuttle back to central control. Teresa went to bed immediately and Jenna and I watched TV till ASUCD Controller Jon Avidor returned at like 2am. Then I went back to my place and went to sleep. At 4am everyone else got back, and unitrans Planning and Marketing Manager Shemek Pawlik came up to tell me everyone was drinking. I actually considered joining them briefly before rolling over and going to sleep.

   Events Sunday were cancelled because too many people had left. Of probably 40+ people at the workshops on Saturday, only around 18 survived till Sunday morning. We never did find out what happened to the mysterious Mark Champaign, secret overlord of ASUCD. We slept in a bit, then Russ Fagely and I watched the end of Red October on TV, we all packed up and fled. The End.




   *Please see the disclaimer in my info. Anything that appears to be illegal is without exception completely fictional.