Student government elections are in full swing at Cal, and at least one campus blogger is less than thrilled. “There’s always a vile scent of deception that overwhelms the senses throughout the month of April,” writes Chris Smyrniotis on his blog, The Catalytic Triad. (Subtitle: “The coordination of science, education and progressive politics to catalyze change.”) Seems the senior’s progressive politics don’t extend to using Facebook as a campaign tool, which he likens to “a testament to their alignment with Satan himself.” He picks on sophomore presidential candidate Ilana Nankin, a Duff sister lookalike with 2,236 online pals. “… By what standards are we judging our friends when we have 1000+ ‘friends’ on the Facebook 2 years into our college experience?” Smyrniotis asks.
Well, Chris, how about lambasting one of the guys instead? Of seven candidates vying for the post of president, Nankin is the only woman. So even if you deem her, ah, quite easy in the social networking sense, at least she had the guts to jump into the pool. Overall, women comprise but a third of all candidates, and that’s just plain sad considering that women represent 54 percent of Cal’s student body.
Smyrniotis may detest Facebook (despite hosting a page there himself), but it seems some Facebookers hate the election as much as he does. One group has popped up on the site bearing the joyfully dubious name, “oh, you’re running for ASUC Senate? blow me.” An unedited description: “for anyone sick of these bitches who shake your hand, walk you to class, randomly friend you on facebook, hand you a flyer with campaign “promises”, write their fucking names on every sidewalk square on southside, and all that other fake-ass popularity bullshit.”
So far there’s only one topic up for discussion: Are you too annoyed to vote? Our favorite response to date: “I vote for engineers and Squelch folks. Somebody has to be in MLK wasting millions of dollars in student fees for the sake of a resume boost, so it might as well be a combination of my fellow nerds and professional dildo racers instead of someone simply looking for a secret passage into law school.” Right on.
In other UC Berkeley news… care to join a Rubik’s cubing club?
