Empty Cage

I’m only really a secret politician. I’m not going to come out and say I have any importance in student politics. I do have a job (President of the Philosophy Student’s Association), but as far as I’m concerned it’s not a wildly coveted duty — at least partially because I don’t get paid like SAFA or the SFUO — and yet deal with at least some levels of political bullshit.

At the University of Ottawa student politics are serious business. From my conversations with people at other schools students politics are a joke and are often happy to accept that role. I appreciate a strong student government a lot, if students have a lot of power then they can improve the experience at the school, mobilize change and attempt to modernize ancient school policies.

Which begs the question why we have such a low student satisfaction here at UofO. I’d like to speculate, but I’m poorly informed and despite the previous two paragraphs the SFUO and student government are not actually what I want to talk about here today.

There is a new website making its rounds in the UO community, known as UOleaks (please google it if you want to read it, I’m not giving the satisfaction of another referring site). A student run blog, that is allowing me to lose even more faith in the system here.

UOleaks is a website that has decided to make the SFUO and administration ‘accountable’ ironic when you realize every blogger on the site operates under an alias, and that the WHOIS information for the domain name is hidden. UOleaks posts ‘tips’ they receive from the student body and comment on them, with a strong political bias. And you know what? That’s fine, if you have an opinion I want to hear it — but I want to hear it from you, not some board of shadowy figures.

I have made no secret that I find the Fulcrum, our student newspaper, extremely bland (and Dear Di to be one of the most horrible things ever printed on a frequent basis). However, Fulcrum writers take responsibility for their writing, and UOleaks hides.

And for fear of what? Last I checked this was student politics, not a police state. What are they going to do to you, UOleaks? Or is there another reason you don’t want us to know who you are. You coy bastards, what’s that under your webskirt?

I have suspected since the beginning that I know one of the authors, again, my connection to student politics and the slant at which the journal is written, plus where I found the link. Don’t worry, love, I’m not going to out you. But accept your words. I’m sick of this site’s declaration of accountability without being accountable themselves. They have this air of being liberators and informers of the student population, but can they be trusted?

My concern goes along these lines, without names, or identifiers of any kind, how do we know this hasn’t been written by candidates in the election? Based on the strong political leanings of the site (all the authors being nearly unanimous in their election decisions) it doesn’t seem so far fetched given this is the case. If there was some real dialogue about candidates I would be far less likely to get my tinfoil hat on.

And in many cases I agree with UOleaks, independently, I voted for almost all their recommendations. Except Communications (I’m sorry, the candidate they picked for Communications had a seat on the BOA, and certainly only once attended our Arts Board meetings, you had a chance I don’t trust you to communicate. Sorry.)

So, Uoleaks, grow up, honestly. Maybe then I’ll take your bitching seriously.

Of course, no one takes my bitching seriously even with my name unveiled, so I do understand you pain.

Originally posted on my Facebook:

Perhaps I’m not the only the only one feeling her steadfast apathy towards the SFUO migrating into mild irritation? I mean, let’s not overstate things, I still don’t give much of a damn what my ‘student federation’ does. However they are actually becoming hard to ignore, which is something I don’t want in my student government. In fact, if someone ran on the platform of leaving me the hell alone it might actually shake me out of my disdain for the SFUO long enough get me voting on something.

I guess I should start by pointing out that all I know about the UOttawa ‘Shitstorm’ (as the Fulcrum so eloquently put) it is hearsay and a brief skimming of the article written by our two-dimensional student newspaper, (which, to be honest, I probably only picked up to hack my way through the sudoku from hell, and ridicule the paper’s “comic artist” for having the sense of humour of a $2.99 joke book from the bargain bin at Chapters). That is to say, this is based purely on half-truths and what I think is amusing, because I am a sick sad person with nothing better to do.

For those who either don’t go to UOttawa or are blessed with the ability to never know what is going on at school I’ll give a brief synopsis of what happened from how I see it. I painstakingly avoided voting in the SFUO elections and somehow they are back and more annoying than ever, as failed presidential candidate “RPG” decides to accuse the winner of cheating (running on a slate — for shame!), using some obscure passage from a document no one cares enough about to read. Then there was some sort of investigation — people had signs at said investigation that mentioned racism, and slander, but to be honest I was too busy not giving a shit to read them too carefully. To be fair, though far be it from me to actually give a damn about who is “right” in this particular situation, the “Face it, you lost” signs really spoke to me.

But there’s nothing like walking past the newspaper stand in residence and seeing Seamus Wolf’s best politician snarl go down in mortal combat against the tented fingers of the batshit insane RPG. A moment of contemplation before you draw a curly mustache on both of them, chortling at how clever you are. You can hardly tell which one you’d rather ignore as student body president. Mr. Wolf running on a campaign of “I was on the SFUO last year and so my awesomeness now blinds you to the fact that I have no real platform” and Mr. uhm… RPG running on a platform of “I believe in RPG” which just proves that everyone is going to cash in on Heath Ledger’s death this school year. I’m not even going to comment on the Harvey Dent parallels that can be drawn because that’s just mean spirited.

Of course, maybe it’s just because the Almighty RPG intimidates me with his intelligence, clearly I need to be talked down to and given his initials because my mortal brain cannot comprehend his full name. (I’m looking at you, YHWH).

Perhaps the reason for my agitation about this whole thing is really a deep seeded one stemming from waking up for some 8:30AM class and finding myself staring through several equally pretentious candidates for half an hour wondering simultaneously if vegetarians do eat animal crackers and why I am watching infomercials when I pay $5,322.98 a year in tuition to these people. Oh, that’s right, the SFUO is important to me, and… impacts me on a daily basis. Seriously. Every day. Even Thursdays.

In conclusion, once this epic ‘Storm of Shit’ quiets I urge whoever is made SFUO president to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, whatever his name is.