After reading the guest commentary Monday by Emmalyn Garrett (“Campus open forum was anything but,” ODE, March 10), I have nothing but a bad taste for the current student government. Although Ms. Garrett defends the event as being unconnected to Kari Herinckx and Jesse Hough’s campaign, it was obvious that Take Back Campus was a campaign event. I find it utterly repulsive that the current student body president and her cabinet members abused their positions of power to bribe program leaders with PCM credit in exchange for their attendance. The cronyism and special interests that have taken over the student government disgusts me.
How do I know this, you might ask? Intuitively, anyone should be able to guess that for the simple reason that Ms. Garrett is defending the event as being “unrelated” to campaigns is a huge red flag that in fact it was related. Maybe she submitted this guest commentary because she wanted to cover herself in case people starting talking. Talking about what? Upon entering the Take Back Campus event, everyone was required to write his or her name, email address and phone number. I refused to sign it since I wasn’t a program leader and I don’t like my contact information out, and they almost didn’t let me in. However, a few of my friends did sign it and over the weekend they were repeatedly contacted by phone by the Kari and Jesse campaign and were offered various positions in the student government in exchange for support of their campaign. They cited their recent involvement in campus issues as a reason for contacting them. But Kari and Jesse used Take Back Campus to get phone numbers from students and the entire event was funded, organized and put on by the current student government. This disgusts me at the deepest level. Student leaders who engage in such immoral acts should be held accountable for them, and furthermore, I think that the public should know about them.
Caroline Beranek
University student