Former ASUO Executives Nilda Brooklyn and Joy Nair have had a long year, and we are thankful new ASUO Execs Rachel Pilliod and Ben Buzbee are now working to pick up the slack from this year’s mediocre student body leaders. The former executives did make some headway on their original campaign promises — namely by reducing, but not eliminating, the student energy fee. All things considered, Brooklyn and Nair’s reign met with fair success at times, but the pair did not live up to our expectations as student leaders.
The ASUO’s “Doin’ it in the Dark” campaign had limited interest from students, but it was a small victory for the ASUO office. Brooklyn and Nair were able to reduce the $30 energy fee in fall term to $20 winter term and $15 spring term. But all of the Exec’s public promotion of conservation and the elimination of the fee seemed to disappear six months ago, after the first reduction. And the original campaign promise was to eliminate the $30 fee altogether.
We were also disappointed with other campaign promises that were not met during the course of the year. Brooklyn and Nair’s original platform included creating a housing code for Eugene, improving the residence halls and reaching out to average students through the ASUO.
Brooklyn and Nair did some vague work to create a housing code but appeared to give up on the project after they had invested so much energy in conservation efforts. They ended the year without a formal draft of the code for the city of Eugene or an outline of their accomplishments for their successors to pick up where they left off.
Residence hall standards were hardly promoted after the pair
entered office and the current
executives don’t have any guidelines or suggestions to continue the project. Residence halls continue to decline in livability, but the executives failed to make housing improvements a top priority.
All of the ASUO Exec candidates for 2002-2003 election criticized Brooklyn and Nair’s accessibility. At the Emerald, many reporters also experienced difficulty reaching the women, and they were infamous for declining comment for stories or simply not returning phone calls.
The executives’ office never finished completing the ASUO Green Tape Notebook during the year, a main administrative duty of the ASUO president and vice-president. The incoming executives will have to pick up the slack on that project as well, even though Brooklyn and Nair should have completed the notebook months ago.
The pair did make connections with several key student leaders in unions but had no impact on the majority of average students. Brooklyn said herself that she wished she had been able to engage more people in the ASUO during her tenure.
Brooklyn and Nair did make progress in registering students to vote. Voters, especially student voters, are notoriously difficult to motivate. With so much voter apathy, it was amazing 10 tickets emerged during the ASUO election this year.
We were taken aback by Brooklyn and Nair’s enormous sign that gave a countdown of days they had left in office. The “Getting the fuck out countdown” was so big, it dwarfed all of the other fliers in their office. With an exit so ungraceful, we wonder if they had good intentions at the start but became jaded in the end.
Overall, we saw Brooklyn and Nair make their biggest strides in fall term, but we thought they rested on their laurels for the rest of the year. We hope future executives learn from their mistakes, and the mistakes of many past
executives — pick a few tangible issues that have a real measure of success and go after them. Making campaign promises is a way to get elected, but taking on too many projects at once can come back to haunt executives in the end.