Fact: Last year, former OSPIRG board chair Charles Denson gave $673 to Ben & Katie campaign manager Sophie Luthin in two checks with unfortunate memo lines. @@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/sophie%2Aluthin@@
Fact: Luthin in subsequent days gave checks with the same dollar amounts to Ben & Katie presidential candidate (current ASUO president) Ben Eckstein.  @@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/ben%2Aeckstein@@
Fact: This information was brought to the attention of the Oregon Daily Emerald in the days immediately preceding this year’s ASUO elections. @@Today’s paper confirms these facts@@
The sad issue with this news is that it paints, with broad strokes, the ASUO as many students have already pictured politics in general. It leaves several, in the current election, complicit in something that tarnishes the image of our student government.
Which is why we would like to encourage a strong vote for Laura Hinman and Nick McCain for ASUO president and vice president and the We Are Oregon slate. Beyond the simple fact of the checks last year which affect members of the other primary slates, they are the slate which has not stooped to tricks like making false websites for other campaigns. (Check out http://asuoweareoregon.com. One of our copy editors, while checking facts, actually happened upon this website Monday evening before finding the campaign’s real website.) @@http://asuo.uoregon.edu/senate.php?a=30@@ @@http://rha.uoregon.edu/committees/executive-board/nick-mccain/@@
And beyond that, we have seen real leadership from Hinman this year. In the controversial first EMU vote, senators stayed up until 4 a.m. working on a memorandum of understanding between the Executive and and the Senate to put on the EMU vote we voted on during fall term. And it was Hinman, largely, that facilitated the meat of that meeting.
Eckstein, responding to the news of the checks, told the Emerald that he was disappointed in his former campaign managers for this “political fodder.”
We completely agree. But that just means that the blood is on twice as many hands. Because we disagree with his next assessment, that “this is not an issue impacting student lives.”
Students deserve to not have to deal with this kind of backroom dealing. And that doesn’t mean Senate shouldn’t talk about it when it happens. It doesn’t mean the Emerald shouldn’t report on it when it happens.
It means it shouldn’t happen.
To say that this is not an issue that affects student lives is to say that student government is not an issue that affects student lives. And unless that body wants to remain known as glorified bean counters (a stereotype many recent senators have hoped to end), integrity in leadership does affect students.
We support Hinman and McCain, because what they are offering seems to be a way out of this year-in, year-out debate about campaign integrity.