POLITICS may be a good thing, as the slogan of the University's Center for Politics goes, but as the events of the past week show, it remains a nasty business. The alleged politicking and backroom dealing that has permeated the days leading to University-wide elections this week and the newspaper's coverage thereof have led to a dangerous air of distrust and cynicism among many students.
However, when The Cavalier Daily smeared the line between political advocate and dutiful watchdog, not only were currentStudent Council President Micah Schwartz andCouncil presidential candidate Ed Hallen personally slandered, but the leadership of this publication offered a gross disservice to the students they seek to inform by permanently disenfranchising students from their own self-governance.
This charge should be checked by the caveat that this offense really isn't the fault of the students who publish this paper. The national media has been struggling with how to properly fill the roles of civic informant and mediator between candidates and the public, all the while upholding the American liberal (absent the pejorative sense) tradition of guarding the public against tyranny from our government. Frequently, the "real media" walks this line poorly too, but I leave this digression for a later column.
Locally, the leadership of The Cavalier Daily may genuinely believe that Student Council has been working in the wrong direction for some time. That is their right. It is also the right of the Managing Board to publish lead editorials that publicize this view. In fact, they have.
First, last year's Board argued that the Rock n' Rally was a bad idea and would fail miserably. They were wrong: It registered hundreds of students in an eventual effort to win $68 million for the University from the General Obligation Bond. A later lead editorial by the same Board claimed that Council did nothing, because the long Tuesday night meetings were a waste of their beat reporter's time. This neglects the nearly 20 committees that work throughout the year producing a farmers' market, promoting women's health, improving library hours, resetting class registration, expanding the Escort Service and much more than this space allows for description. Granted, the group that endorsed candidates this year is the Board that succeeded those who wrote the critical lead editorials about Council.Judgments aside, the Board was well within their rights to call for change in student government at the University -- no matter how baseless the claim -- and call they did.
The strongest cry came in the form of an endorsement for the outsider candidate in the Council presidential race. The endorsement read, "[the candidate's] perspective will be a welcome change from the current way of thinking by many on Council already. The events of the past few days have shown just how correct [the candidate] has been in identifying Council as a 'club,' and the desperate lengths to which some people will go to perpetuate this" ("Vote Daisy Lundy for President," Feb. 13).
Perhaps a closer inspection of a different chronology might offer an interesting perspective. First, last year's Board spent a year decrying Council's lack of positive change on Grounds. This charge is unfounded for the reasons above, but the charge remains. Second, the new Board endorses the one candidate on the ballot who does not have a strong affiliation with Council: the reform candidate. Third, articles are published that not only incriminate the current Council Executive Board absent of any evidence, but subsequently scramble for information to incriminate the candidate who they deem the heir apparent. This is then published as fact, not opinion or conjecture. Reread the first paragraph of the news article from a week ago and underline words such as "possibly," "probably," "suggests" and "likely."One gets the idea.
If there has been any "desperate" backroom dealing, it has not been on the third floor of Newcomb Hall, but rather in the basement. The continued petty, baseless, and unsubstantiated attacks upon student government by the paper are single-handedly working to ruin student self-governance at the University. Simply read the letter to the editor from this past Tuesday ("Contradictory candidate coverage") which outlines the sheer hypocrisy of the newspaper's prolonged editorial campaign.
Schwartz and the rest of Council's Executive Board are honest people, no less sincere than those of this paper's Managing Board. Schwartz took an active interest in the future of the organization for which he donated his final year at this institution. Criminalizing such actions do more than injustice to his service.
Every American president since John Adams has chosen a favorite in the race for his successor, and Council should be held to no higher standard. No allegations have yet been brought forward that show that Schwartz inappropriately used powers of his office to influence the election. Instead the claim was made by innuendo and hearsay by this paper.
The Cavalier Daily walks a difficult line between student activist and unbiased news resource for the University. With the power of being the monopolistic news provider comes a great responsibility to fill that role appropriately. The unsubstantiated crusade against Council should not be tolerated by students any longer. It is well time we got back to the real business of working together to make this institution a better place. It is a shame the recent manufactured scandal has taken the student body's attention from this goal.
Preston Lloyd is a committee chair for Student Council and a columnist whose column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at plloyd@cavalierdaily.com.
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