Mr. Plaid on ASG and This Site

Mr. Plaid checks in once again, with his thoughts on ASG in general and our site in particular. The letter is printed below, with our comments following.

Guys this is fun and all, thanks!

I feel like a semi-loser even looking at this but hell, maybe I sort of am. Here’s the deal. You have to understand that ASG and student government takes a long time, and events don’t happen over night. Therefore when you credit things to people like no Saturday finals for Kim, its ludicrous, that bill was passed way back in 95-96, look at the archives to find out. The same goes for Rox and the shuttle, that idea has been kicked around for the last five years, again check the archives. And most of all Cable, at the debate tonight someone claimed that Friedman did that, hardly, he may have speed up the process but that had been an issue talked about since ‘81(check the archives), and you cant give him credit for that. The street also works the other way…if legislation is passed this year, you can’t expect it to be implemented tommorow, this is ASG, and we dont have the ultimate power the administration does, so this shit of getting ideas implemented takes time. So don’t credit shit to people without some careful documentation because you mis-inform, and to those few who do know the truth you look dumb.

—Mr. Plaid

1) In terms of our “misinformation,” most of it was based on facts mentioned by the candidates themselves. Kim took credit for the removal of Saturday finals at last night’s debates, and Jeff Friedman also was willing to take the credit given to him by others at the debates. In fact, it never occurred to us that a bold-faced lie would be used by a candidate in her campaigning, and we hope that it’s more likely that she worked on the legislation in some way and by virtue of that work, felt that she deserved credit for it. We will be more than happy to check our facts more rigorously in the future, but the ASG Archive, useful as it is, does have some holes. Where is there a complete source of ASG legislation that could be examined by the average student in hard copy? Not everyone has that kind of know-how…

2) It doesn’t seem too unfair to us that the ASG officer accomplishing the goal would in the end recieve most of the credit. So while cable and a student shuttle may have been kicked around for a while, and hard work was done by other officers on both issues, Rox and Friedman (according to popular belief, at least) can be credited with accomplishing those specific goals. Again, if an officer did a significant amount of work on a piece of legislation, it doesn’t seem unfair at all for that officer to take credit for it, and for us to credit that officer with the accomplishment of that goal. It’s a slight distortion of the truth, but an acceptable one, since they did work to make the legislation happen.

3) In general, your argument seems to speak more toward the ultimate impotency of ASG and not toward results. This is ironic, since the main thrust of your piece seeks to clarify our errors regarding results. Making things happen does take time, but cable, the student shuttle, and no Saturday finals are all tangible results affecting students on a daily basis that have been accomplished, thanks in some way to the hard work of ASG as a whole and specific members of it. So yes, things do take time to happen, but when they do happen, it speaks more to the effectiveness of ASG than its impotence. Any other thoughts on this out in Reader-land?

4) We may look dumb for not knowing the truth, but you’re a semi-loser for looking at this site, so I guess we’re even. :)

—Mr. Black