Week in Review Part 2: Warning: A Look Behind the Machinery, Debating might be agreeable to your health, Venting about the Beacon, and JPFW Looming

As mentioned in the last post, this entry will discuss the ASUP Senate Speech Night and how it was covered.

Warning: this will be long.  Please stick with it; I provided some nice links to support my views!

Even though the 2 comments were favorable of my writing, I still feel like I was a little bit of a talking head, and not of the "Heaven" and "And She Was" variety. I was surprised I found the Senior Gift part of the ASUP Constitution, but I'm digressing.

Before I get to the content of the event itself, I need to provide how I got involved. The process started on a Friday, Feb. 4, when Secretary Burrelle shot me an e-mail. She mentioned KDUP has played a role in prior Speech Nights and wondered if we could handle this year's moderation because she had to go to a Drama Conference and thus could not be present.

Being the dedicated person I am, I spent the next few hours going through KDUP's archives to find anything about ASUP Senate.  I was only able to find the 2006 Speech Night, a cursory mention of Beergate, in which a candidate handed out flyers to attendees of a keg party, including the sibling of another candidate and a 2003 Beacon article from the then-president about ASUP Senate.  Since the latter were not much help, I listened to the question from 2006.  I quickly realized how similar the concerns of students were five years earlier, even down to the concern over printing allotment that was brought up at the following Senate meeting. 

I wrote down the questions, sent them to the KDUP news team because it is under their responsibility, and only Kirby, the News Director was comfortable participating because they did not feel like they could help and Kirby and I, since I have been attending ASUP Senate Meetings, should handle the event.  I also consulted others (the current president and vice president, other students I met, and faculty) and received some productive ideas that did not make the final list, like what has been your legacy within ASUP Senate, what would you do differently/similar to your predecessor, and how to increase participation within Senate meetings. Secretary Burrelle also provided a list of general questions last year's senate provided and the agenda.

Luckily, I also got help from Senator Vasconcellos, a member of the ASUP Awareness Committee.  He was willing to step in and co-moderate with Kirby. Thanks so much for rolling with the changes and great job!

However, I did not spend too much time outside the occasional day of work until the night before the event.  I overheard some candidates wondering how early to appear and got the opinion of Adviser Koffler. He mentioned the moderators needed to dress up to set the tone of the evening and how to handle personal attack questions: cutt of the question if it is an ad hominem attack, but if it is more biting than bitter, let it go, but remind the audience that the night was for the issues and how the candidates could handle the issues.  I spent the time after the meeting crafting e-mails to the candidates and Adviser Koffler. Luckily, Adviser Koffler managed to craft great introductions to questions, partly due to his decade plus of  Speech Night experiences.

That night, I spent the time before the event in CST 363, kavetching and fretting about the event going wrong, a personal characteristic I have to acknowledge. Thanks again to Caitlin and Roya for the switch to the bow tie, even if it bothered me through the entire event, existing just below my chin.

As mentioned in the twitter feed, ASUP's Facebook page and ASUP's Blog, there was plenty of agreeing, but this should have been expected from the similar platforms of the candidates.

Thanks again to Dr. Lovejoy and CST 363 for raising awareness of the Speech Night, allowing former CPB Director Tarra McCurdy follow it from New York.

Of course, the Beacon made their endorsements of candidates.  Sadly, the opinions seemed only formed from the impressions of Speech Night and views of the candidates, not the views of objectivity. I might have been more than a little concerned with keeping time, but I fail to remember hearing anything Presidential Candidate Imfeld say provide an impression he would "favor the administration's needs over the students' needs during the debate." Sure, he said he would go to the administration and provide student views and he endorsed 11-03, but the other president and vice president candidates did as well.   My point is no more obvious than their endorsement of Caitlin Chu for Treasurer.

They state:

Caitlin is a highly organized and genuine candidate who has forward thinking ideas and experience with the budget in the ASUP Finance Committee.
While Andy is enterprenurial and ambitious, he appeared unprofessional and apathetic during the ASUP debates.

How he appeared in the debates does not necessarily relate to how he would act with clubs.  By resorting to "lazy journalism", the Beacon, already a burr in my side over their preference on feature stories like a staff member getting some internet publicity from a blending of Snooki from Jersey Shore and the Mona Lisa
getting placed on page two and a piece on the results of a survey on the mental health of college freshman as their "top" story.  I know it tied in well with the Peer Health Educator's program earlier this month, but "top" stories have to be the ones that are the most important to readers, like the piece on 11-03 the week before, inconveniently published the morning after a compromise was reached.

Though they have dubbed the election "an election for the ages," the label would be more fitting for even last year's election in which non-senators tried but failed to topple those with Senate experience.  A race with similar platforms and unsatisfying responses even to a question of how they are different from their opponent makes this race similar to too many of the real political races, in which voters will select based off their personal feelings toward the candidates, something the night should have helped avoid.  

The audience did step up and ask some tough questions like how they plan to relate to the faculty and the aforementioned difference question.

Thanks again for all those who participated in the process and looking at my length means the Week in Review gets a special part 3, in which JPFW will finally get discussed.  Stay tuned for a report on the "Varsity Sport of the Mind", what the future can entail, sponsored by Career Services and the Alumni Department, what I gleamed from the Coffeehouse performance.

In case part 3 falls after the election, I will close with the sign-off of another famous TV journalist, Edward R. Murrow, " Good Night and Good Luck!"