For years, rumors have circulated throughout the ASUO about something some members have deemed “Fight Club.”
“Fight Club” is allegedly a process by which ASUO presidential candidates are chosen and supported by an outside organization, namely the Oregon Student Association, which is an advocacy organization that focuses on student issues such as tuition. Former ASUO president Sam Dotters-Katz elaborated on the term.
“The term has been used to describe an alleged institutionalized system where an outside interest picks a student leader as their preferred ASUO presidential candidate well before elections, and aids that individual with campaign trainings, resources and potentially other forms of assistance,” Dotters-Katz said.
Allegedly, OSA chooses certain people to support and supplies them with the tools to win an election.
“While individuals associated with OSA may have been involved, I have never seen any evidence that OSA was directly sanctioning or authorizing these trainings,” Dotters-Katz said.
Then, many of these people go on to work within the organization. In the past ten years, eight ASUO presidents have had ties to OSA, and two of them are currently employed there.
Sara Hamilton, a former ASUO senator, had firsthand experience with this idea.
“When I was an intern and was selected to run on a slate that outside organizations supported, I was asked to meet in the basement of a bank on a Saturday morning,” Hamilton said. “I have no idea what organizations they were affiliated with. They told us that outside volunteers would be brought to campus during the weeks of the campaign to help us out.”
Hamilton, who studies law at Emory University and works for the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, expressed her concerns with how a trend like this can affect an election. She explained that outside organizations know that students want to get involved but don’t know how and therefore entice these people into thinking what the organization believes.
“Superior knowledge and resources create almost insurmountable barriers that the everyday student who wants to run for office won’t be able to overcome,” Hamilton said. “Especially for students who have no reason to know a lot about how to run a campaign, outside information and help was traditionally the difference between a sure win and a sure loss.”
Former ASUO senator and presidential candidate Carina Miller described Fight Club as a way by which OSA chooses the most electable candidates to support.
Miller, who was on the OSA board, felt pressured to run with former president Emma Kallaway as her vice president, but instead ran for president on a different slate.
“My biggest frustration was that it takes away the power from students,” Miller said. “It is a way to ensure funding for OSA.”
Miller talked about how, in her opinion, there were more qualified people who didn’t get chosen because they didn’t have the same resources as an OSA-supported candidate.
“They have control over information others don’t,” she said. “But because they weren’t an OSA candidate, they weren’t elected.
Former EMU Board chair and presidential candidate Michelle Haley was privy to these rumors, but didn’t really consider them to carry much weight until she accidentally overheard a conversation in an elevator. According to Haley, she was at a National Grassroots Legislative Conference in Washington D.C. with other ASUO presidential candidates.
She got into an elevator with her friend and opponent at the time, Miller, and a USSA campus organizer in Arizona. Haley heard the campus organizer apologize to Miller for not choosing her. According to Haley, the organization had voted to support Kallaway instead of Miller. Kallaway won the election later that year.
“Hearing someone apologize for an election in Oregon who is so disconnected from the situation showed me that this was tied to something,” Haley said. “It made it real.”
Emily McLain, the executive director for OSA, said that OSA staff doesn’t work in student government elections and the organization doesn’t take a stance on student government elections.
“OSA helps foster elevated political and academic discourse on campus,” McLain said. “We are excited to work for anyone and everyone who is elected.”
The allegations shocked Kallaway because, as a staff member, she has been explicitly trained to stay nonpartisan during elections. She explained that the University has an incredibly in-depth elections process and it is important that it stays on campus.
“As a former president, I’m glad the OSA representative was neutral, so I was able to shape the organization myself,” Kallaway said. “I find it a real privilege to work with any student that is elected.”
ASUO president Ben Eckstein echoed these thoughts, saying that OSA staff is trained regularly every year about how to maintain neutrality during student government elections.
“OSA provides leadership development across campus and engages hundreds of students,” he said. “It holds trainings that involve everyone on campus.”
At the end of the day, Hamilton doesn’t believe OSA is a bad organization. She just wishes they weren’t as connected to the University.
“I think OSA has very noble goals,” Hamilton said. “I know Emily McLain, and she is a smart and passionate person. But there shouldn’t be outside organizations at all in the ASUO Executive.”