Opinion: The recent ASUO election cycle has laid bare just how corrupt, ineffectual, overly bureaucratic and morbidly funny UO’s student government is.

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Last week I wrote about ASUO’s corruption and inability to represent the student body in broad strokes, but it would be criminal to not extend this thesis through the most recent election. This election cycle was a perfect crystallization of everything wrong with ASUO: bribery, personal attacks and arbitrary bureaucracy. Holistically, it was a wonderful performance proving that, in its current state, ASUO is a shambling corpse of student government.
To set the stage, there were two main parties: Ducks Connected, led by then-ASUO Senate President Claire O’Connor, and Progress UO, led by ASUO Secretary of Programs Administration Luda Isakharov and Kavi Shrestha who holds ASUO Senate seat 04. Though the Progress UO ticket eventually won out, it wasn’t before a dark comedy that would’ve been a lot funnier if these jokers didn’t have a budget of millions of dollars paid for by us.
The inner workings of ASUO are a convoluted mess, but for the purposes of this story, understand that once elected, the president hires candidates to executive positions. These candidates are chosen after applying through Handshake.
O’Connor’s campaign, which was composed mostly of ASUO incumbents, circumvented this process. She guaranteed executive positions — which get large stipends worth hundreds — to campaign members before she was elected. O’Connor then had staff sign non-disclosure agreements to hide the slate’s corruption. Furthermore, Ducks Connected did everything it could to run unopposed, making multiple attempts to absorb Progress UO, even offering Shrestha the VP slot.
We know this because of ASUO’s grievance process, which documents everything in dense legalese from little whiny complaints to groundbreaking scandals. The issue is the Election Board responds to both with the same strength. There were 21 grievances filed for this election alone. Yes, I read all of them; my brain is mush.
In a twist, Ducks Connected’s bribery was only confirmed because O’Connor filed a grievance against herself. While filing another against Isakharov and Shrestha also for bribery. Of course, Progress UO had done nothing wrong, and the complaint was dismissed, but for her crimes, O’Connor was personally sanctioned to no-campaigning for three days.
Thankfully, a following grievance by Isakharov and Shrestha inquiring into Duck’s Connected hiring practices led the Election Board to finally disband the party. The fallout from this decision revealed the NDAs were never notarized, meaning they were fake and non-binding. Ducks Connected’s end scattered most of the staff to the wind because they were only really in it for the stipend anyhow –– but not before the party got enough votes to make it to the runoff. O’Connor has since resigned from her senate position and scrubbed the internet of her presence in the election.
If I pitched this to my editor as a plot for a sitcom, I’d get laughed at. Yet we have this comedy gold being performed by our own student government.
Ella Meloy, a former ASUO vice president, did not seem surprised about this season.
“It’s more than common for elections to get like this,” Meloy said. “Students that are running generally have a lack of knowledge on how to run a campaign.”
Truth is: ASUO attracts people who are already overcommitted in their studies and workload, students who see government as a way to pad their resume.
Isakharov believes her administration can right some wrongs of ASUO and make it more transparent to the student body.
“These are cultural problems that have developed over years,” Isakharov said. “The burden of student government is to make students care.”
Isakharov is right. It’s not our fault we are so disengaged. ASUO operates far from the student view, and when we do participate, we have to vote on three pages of grammatical changes no one cares about. C’mon, this is embarrassing. We aren’t some rinky-dink operation. UO has almost 20,000 undergrads, and we’re voting on where “hereinafter” goes?
Ultimately, I’m optimistic the new administration will change things, but this is still ASUO we’re talking about. When the current drama subsides, it will probably fade into the background until another scandal. But I hope ASUO will one day be a representative student government working as an extension of our interests.
Ideally, we’d see a complete change in course: more contested races, more town halls and a newsletter would be bare minimum. And if the Judicial Branch wants to cosplay as a real legal body that uses fancy language, its members need to convene publicly with minutes taken. If ASUO wants to not be a joke, it needs to lose everything that makes it ASUO and embed the institution in the material lives of students.