The ASUO Executive should be ashamed.
Whoever put together a list of 13 unrelated, biased and leading questions as a result of a beautiful, bipartisan effort from all parts of the ASUO should seriously be ashamed.
If you haven’t voted yet on the EMU/Student Recreation Center renovation, check it out. The DuckWeb referendum created to gauge student approval acquired a few ride-alongs. Like the Office of Multicultural Academic Success. And the athletic department’s funding.
One egregious example of our disappointment has to do with the OMAS question. As follows, the question asks students: “Should the University of Oregon dissolve the Office of Multicultural Academic Success in order to eliminate culturally responsive academic resources?” Such a question is irrelevant in this context. No one is going to vote against a move that will “eliminate culturally responsive academic resources,” so this is not the forum that will encourage appropriate debate about this issue.
More distressing, however, is a case of potential libel that the student government now has on its hands. The next question concerns a case @@checked@@brought up recently on the UO Matters blog concerning how the University’s lawyers are dealing with potential rules issues with the NCAA. That’s the key word there: “potential.” The question asks, “Should tuition dollars continue to fund legal fees for the University of Oregon Athletics Department to settle its violation of NCAA rules?”
These questions are tilted, of course, but this takes on a new level of gravity in that it tilts on a falsity. There are no current violations of NCAA rules, and a vote based on this premise will be tainted. And that means the answers will be tainted.
Perhaps the biggest shame is that what could have been a simple vote — a two-question vote that could truly have attracted a high student voting rate — is now going to scare away voters on the margins. Those voters, for whom the ASUO is not their everyday life, are the ones for whom such an effort was made to attract to include in the vote.
And if this list of questions deters a quality response because of the sheer deluge of unconnected policy questions, it is a severe shame that will muck up an otherwise amazing story of student involvement.
Because, with everything happening in Portland last night, did this vote need any more distraction?
Editorial: EMU Referendum contains uncalled-for, leading questions
Daily Emerald
November 27, 2011
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