The campaign being run by Sara Hamilton and Athan Papailiou is well put together and highly organized. Two experienced ASUO members are banding together in order to make positive changes on campus. However, not all that they have done is something I would regard as positive, or even honest for that matter. I want you to know right now that while I do represent a campaign on campus, that in no way has influenced what I have to say here today.
The search for the members of their slate was short and concise. They knew what they were looking for, and they knew how to find it. Many students were asked to come and interview for spots on their “Campaign for Change” slate. We were all led to believe that a fair choice would be made. They opened the meeting by claiming that they were looking to build strength in the slate by adding many people from a broad swath of the campus. However, when the final slate was announced, it seemed many people close to them were handed positions and very little in the way of outreach was done.
Now this is fine and well. As student candidates, we all have the right to run with or without belonging to a slate. However, instead of telling a certain unnamed candidate that he wouldn’t be asked to run for Senate Seat 7 – his desired position – they invited him to run for the SRC advisory board, in which he had no interest, nor any expertise. When he balked at taking the spot, Hamilton informed him all he had to do was run, then once he won the spot he could resign and be appointed to a spot more to his liking by executive decision. All this was based on the speculation that the “Campaign for Change” would win. Not wanting to commit to a ploy so obviously dishonest, the candidate chose to instead declare as an independent. When Sara Hamilton got word of this, she all but erupted. During the phone conversation they had, she went on to inform him that his chances of winning were 1,000,000 to 1. She made it very clear that not only was she upset with him, but that she felt he had no shot at winning. All this leads one to wonder why she invited him to run in the first place.
Again, even this small transgression doesn’t seem all that bad when put in perspective with everything else that went on. Going back to my comment about the slate lacking any real diversity, the person running for Seat 7 was replaced by Karen Trippe. Ms. Trippe, as I recall, was introduced the day of the meeting as not only a close friend of the financial manager of the “Campaign for Change,” but she was also as an executive member of the slate. She was involved with the interview that the unnamed candidate took with other members, prior to the selection of a slate. Now I can’t speak for anyone but myself on this matter, but it seems that if the decision to pick someone for a position is left up to one of the candidates vying for that very position, then it would be no surprise when that person picks herself. This, my friends, is exactly what happened in the case of Karen Trippe, in her attempt to run for Senate Seat 7. This being said, it was the choice of the executive candidates to allow her to run in that spot. There is no rule that says that they have to give consideration to anyone. However, the manner in which Hamilton and her staff conducted themselves during the selection process doesn’t foster any feeling of trust on my part, or any of those I have spoken to about this personally.
This isn’t a letter aimed at defamation. If there is anything anyone at the Hamilton camp would like to clarify, or any reader would like to say, I would enjoy hearing your responses. I feel that Hamilton’s slate is full of people already deeply entrenched in the political system on campus and there is very little new or different that they have to offer. The executive candidate herself has been described as “Student Senate personified” and it just seems to me that for a person who touts her slate as a provider of change on campus, this episode certainly seems like a lot more of the same.
Jerome Roberts is a University student