By now, we’re all privy to the ASUO Senate’s 10-hour-long meeting and the re-establishment of the EMU Referendum as a result of the agreement framed during said meeting — the memorandum of understanding that has now been signed by Vice President of Student Affairs Robin Holmes and ASUO President Ben Eckstein. (And if you aren’t aware, put down the shot glass and do so promptly.)
YAY! Everyone’s fears and questions have been addressed! Two very opposed sides were able to come together and strike a compromise at a time when compromise in politics is almost as dirty a word as “socialist.”
Despite this new agreement, which seems to address most of — if not all — the concerns some students were having with the referendum, it’s marred by the method in which it had to come about.@@is it now?@@ I’m talking, of course, about the unilateral decision to postpone the EMU vote in the first place.
It may be easy to dismiss the actions of our Executive, seeing as how many student unions and groups on campus are happy with the outcome from both angles. But we mustn’t allow this “victory” to take our attention away from a really serious issue here. It is one so serious that I suspect a large reason this compromise actually happened was due to a proverbial fire lit under the behind of a certain student body president — with a petition, asking for his removal from office, brought to Constitutional Court’s attention.
Thankfully, there was a student willing to acknowledge that President Eckstein was wrong, no matter how (ig)noble his intentions were.
We are very much a liberal society (classical), and part of that means we acknowledge and support that democracy as the be-all, end-all for organization. This isn’t going to be an ideological lecture or a debate (though I’m always down to do so, just email me and find out), but if we’re in agreement that we want a democracy, then we need to start adhering to those standards.
That would entail coming to these agreements before — not after — a unilateral decision has been made by the President.@@does it really matter when, so long as the result is achieved?@@ Despite his claims that this decision was made with the knowledge and support of many student groups who voiced their concerns, there were many people left out of the loop.

Whether this was done intentionally or not isn’t the most glaring issue as the fact that our President saw fit to act alone. Having the support of very vocal individuals doesn’t mean you’re necessarily representing all students, nor does it justify acting alone without the input of many people who are responsible for putting you in office in the first place.
And it is clear that many members on the Senate feel the same. Sens. Jena Langham and Kaitlyn Lange were both unhappy with how this whole scenario played out, and judging from various comments both in the meeting and elsewhere, many people take issue with such blatant disregard for procedure.
In my talks with Sen. Ben Rudin, he expressed his frustrations clearly: “This should not have been done by administrative fiat.”
He would continue, “We don’t elect kings, we elect presidents …” The era of emperors and monarchs is over, and I think we can all be grateful for such, but we do democracy a disservice if we accept and allow for such actions to take place.
It is tragically ironic that it was this very same president, along with Vice President Katie Taylor,@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Katie+Taylor@@ went to the State Board of Higher Education and fought for students to have the right to vote on this issue when the University administration was dead-set on renovations without any student input.
To go from that, to committing the same unilateral decisions that he feared being committed upon the student body, is hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
If as many people were against it as it seemed, it would’ve gone to a vote and failed, and everybody would’ve had their say — or at least the chance to. Moving the goalposts in the eleventh hour is not how our student government should work.

In the wake of the Penn State scandal, many people (rightfully) quoted Burke on good men and evil’s triumph.@@http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html@@ But I think that Christopher Dawson is more fitting: “As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.” @@http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/christopher_dawson.html@@
I’m obviously not suggesting that Robin Holmes, Student Affairs or the State Board are evil, and I am certainly not saying that our Executive is righteous. But rather we should pay attention to what methods our leaders are using to carry out their agenda.
Just because things seemed to have worked out well here in this narrow situation, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be wary of our school administration and the ASUO.
There is a road to hell paved with good intentions, and we might just be traveling down it if we accept this type of behavior from those elected to represent our interests.