My Closing Remarks

My Closing Remarks

Jacob Kampen

Student Senator

Undergraduate/Business Finance and Information Systems

In Paydon Miller’s 4/22 Flip Side article, "Memoirs of a Student Senate Candidate: An Open Letter to All Students," he made some very angry comments that I would like to respond to.

On the second page of his article, Miller mentions "a current student senator" that was working with the current president to "[take] shots at Brewster." Miller didn’t want to name names, but I will save you the guesswork and tell you flat out that I am that senator.

Here are my responses to some of Miller’s statements:

-"If anyone can tell me one way how many credits Aaron Brewster has earned affects his actual ability to govern and represent students, I’ll eat my f--king shoes."

For one, students who refuse to graduate on time directly injure the public opinion of our university. Media like U.S. News and World Report rank UW-Eau Claire on a variety of standards, one being the percentage of students who graduate in four or five years. That percentage is going down because of non-graduating students like Aaron Brewster.

Secondly, there is a finite amount of financial aid and class seat availability. Students who refuse to graduate basically vacuum up financial aid and class spots from newer students. Do we really want to deny classes and financial aid to freshmen so we can keep a super-super-super-super senior in school?

Thirdly, a refusal to graduate demonstrates a level of irresponsibility. Nearly every student I talked to during this campaign was shocked that someone could be entering their eighth year of undergraduate studies. This is comparable to taking six years to finish high school. When you are rapidly approaching a decade-long career as an undergraduate college student, that is not "experience," that’s a problem.

Fourthly, and this was another point stressed by many current senators, Aaron Brewster hurt his own campaign by trying to fight the status quo. As the longest-serving senator in the university, Brewster IS the status quo. As another senator said during the campaign, "Brewster has had six years to push through his agenda; what makes you think he can pull it off as president?" To state it simply, you cannot overthrow "the Man" if you ARE "the Man."

We informed the student body that Brewster was a student entering his eighth year at the university and his seventh year of student senate. This was a very relevant point and I hold no regrets about publicizing these facts.

- "I wish I had it in me to do the same thing you did, but I won’t stoop to that level."

A fabrication of Miller’s article is his claim that he is essentially "above" negative campaigning. Just over six months ago, in our local assembly races, Miller’s organization released a hit piece on Darcy Fields. Fields had owned auto dealerships in the area, so the College Democrats released cartoons showing a caricature of Darcy selling used cars, as well as mocking him for giving out free water bottles to students on our campus.

This was the same election cycle that the Democratic Party released an attack ad ridiculing John McCain’s ability to use an e-mail account. Am I saying that the negative campaigning in the Student Senate Elections was related to the November elections? Not at all. Am I saying that negative campaigning is a standard fixture in politics, and Miller clearly knows and approves of this? Absolutely.

Negative campaigning is a vital aspect of any election. It exposes the problems of a candidate in order to educate voters. It is how we filter out the bad apples, how we "vet" candidates for public office.

- "Part of accepting a position on Senate is being able to take some criticism, and this is especially true if you want to be president."

This is where Miller really starts to discredit his arguments. He said this in reference to current President Tim Lauer, in defense of Brewster’s attacks on Lauer. But if this assertion is true, and it is, then Brewster (who also had a position on Senate and who also wanted to be president) needed to be able to "take some criticism." Miller’s standards apparently only apply to decisions that benefit his candidate of choice. Miller thinks it was ok for Brewster to attack Lauer, but somehow not ok for me to attack Brewster.

- "Disagreeing with the actions a past leader takes does not make a candidate unfit… only different."

Miller is referring to Brewster’s articles in The Flip Side and The Spectator that attacked the current senate and its leadership. But I don’t think that Brewster was disagreeing with us; he was attacking us. Brewster knew that his only hope for victory was a negative campaign. He based his campaign on trying to turn the student body against the current Senate and its leadership. When current president Tim Lauer worked with me on a Facebook group to expose Brewster’s lies for what they were, it wasn’t because Brewster "disagreed with us." It was because our reputations and the legacy of the 52nd session were under brutal attack. Brewster repeatedly accused the current Senate of failure. We needed to defend ourselves.

- "I don’t care if they’ve done it in the past, it’s supposed to be an unbiased news source."

Miller is a politically naïve if he thinks newspapers don’t or shouldn’t endorse candidates. Hundreds of news sources across the country have endorsed candidates for president, congress, state Supreme Court, and even city council. On Election Day last year, Barack Obama had amassed nearly 300 endorsements from daily newspapers.1 This is how politics works, and Miller clearly neither remembers nor understands that.

- "So let me give a big ‘f--k you’ to anyone who voted not for a candidate but against one."

Enough with the hypocrisy! It was Miller’s organization that put the "Palin Not a Qualified Candidate" article in The Spectator. That article, written by the College Democrats PR Director, was not encouraging voting FOR a candidate; it was explicitly encouraging students to vote AGAINST Sarah Palin.2 There are too many examples to list here, but I will also mention that on Election Day Miller was wearing a "McSame-Failin" shirt made to look like the "McCain-Palin" logo. His shirt wasn’t campaigning FOR his candidates; it was campaigning AGAINST their opponent.

The main point I want to make is this: Miller himself actively campaigned against AND encouraged students to vote against a candidate. Miller, now a newly elected senator, shoots himself in the foot with this very angry and vulgar sentence directed at the students he disagrees with. How’s that for leadership? May 6th - September 9th 13

When I told students to vote against Aaron Brewster, Miller decided it was wrong. He sets up rules that he thinks should only apply to his political opponents. Part of picking a candidate is looking at their pros and cons. You choose who to vote for based on someone’s "pros" and their opponent’s "cons." The numerous "cons" of Brewster gave students convincing reason to vote against him and pick someone else to support.

I can only think of two explanations for Miller’s logic in this article. This was either:

A). His first election experience of any kind. How else would he not know about negative campaigning, public scrutiny, and newspaper endorsements? B). A blatant case of hypocrisy. Because his organization and his party ran hundreds of negative campaign ads just last semester, and his candidate ran a very negative campaign during this presidential campaign, he has to ignore that in order to condemn my actions.

Because I know for a fact that Miller has worked on many campaigns throughout his political career, I must conclude that choice B is correct. Nearly every part of his article focused on attacking me and the current senators who opposed Brewster. However, essentially every complaint Miller put forward was about activity that he himself regularly and enthusiastically engages in. To even begin to whine about our actions in this election is unashamed hypocrisy.

Aaron Brewster officially started the negativity with his unfounded assault on the current Senate members. We fought back. And we won. No amount of hypocritical complaining is going to change that result.

The reason I refer to this article as my "closing remarks" is that I don’t want this discussion to push into next year. Anyone that disagrees with me should voice their opinion now in this post-election period, just as I wanted the chance to defend my points in this article. However, let’s move forward next year and focus on the issues that come before the Senate.

I will not hold it against any senator if they supported Brewster, and I hope that my opposition to his campaign will not be an issue either. On both sides of this debate, tensions have been very high, but that’s what happens in an election. After this debate blows over, I look forward to working with my opponents, for the students, in a very successful 53rd Student Senate Session.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_United_States...

2 http://media.www.spectatornews.com/media/storage/paper218/news/2008/09/1...