punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

I’ll bet that this is going to be a slow night. The presidential debates have been pushed to Monday, and everyone who is anyone is living it up at the great big circle-jerk that is Student Appreciation Night. Not me though – I’m currently in the library, telling myself over and over again that wizards are probably lame anyway. I wonder if Greg is doing anything…

Anyway, I had a funny picture of the Stop NSPIRG petitioners outside the SUB that I was going to post, but I left my uplink cable at home, so…yeah.

A wise man (ie: me) once told me a story that I would like to pass on to you all before I head out for the night.

A young vegan boy with a beautiful butterfly cupped in his hand once walked up to an old man who was dining on a McDonald’s hamburger. The old man snatched the butterfly away, and ate it whole without a moment’s pause.

The little boy looked up at the old man with tears in his eyes, and the old man smiled.

“Child, you have learned a valuable lesson here today.”

The child was confused.

“But what is the lesson, sir?”

The old man tossed his styrofoam packaging over his shoulder, and leaned in close so the young boy could hear his every word.

“You are young and idealistic, but I am a jackass. No matter how hard you try to change the world I have created, you will never succeed. For every animal you don’t eat, I will eat two.”

Though understandably disturbed by having just watched an old man devour a butterfly live, the young boy recognized the wisdom in his elder’s words, and immediately began preparing for the GMAT so that he might one day enter a respectable MBA programme.

Think about it.

One last observation:

Really?

I could really go for a double quarter pounder with cheese right about now.

Previously, on the DSU Elections:

• Advance polling: online voting will be available tomorrow (Friday the 13th) from noon until midnight.  No special permission is required to vote; all 15,000 voters have access.  Of course, you won’t be able to return and edit your ballot next week when the polls open again, but your vote will count like anyone else’s.  This is a first for Dal, and is being done because medical students are off next week.

• My personal standpoint is: I beg of you, don’t vote right away unless you absolutely must.  Wait until next week.  There are still 3 full days of campaigning left, including two presidential debates.

• Hey candidates, how does it make you feel that by this time tomorrow some percentage of the votes will be collected, yet the results will be completely unavailable to anyone for 6 days?  Typically I find candidates have trouble with the 2 hours between polls closing on Thursday and the results announcement, so watching them go the 140 hours should be amusing.

• By the way, tomorrow’s (Friday’s) presidential debate in the Grawood has been moved to Monday (2pm in the Grawood, according to an update on Snow’s website).  The online debate is still good-to-go for Sunday at 2pm.

• The Studley debate was covered in-depth here, including observations from Jen Bond and an incredibly detailed and well-written summary from Lisa.

• That said, regarding one of Lisa’s points re: policies and procedures versus consulting students… I think its a bit bizarre to pick one or the other, my suspicion is that Snow meant there was no reason you couldn’t do both (though obviously I have no idea what he actually said).  Regardless, of the two campaign promises, I’d take policies and procedures.  In 9 years of election campaigns, I’ve heard the “more student consultation” promise from about 153 candidates (i.e. all of them), and it carries no weight with me.  It’s a default, obvious promise.  Knowledge of policies and procedures is a measurable trait that is actually useful.  I’ve never heard a candidate promise LESS student consultation, while I have seen many demonstrate very little existing knowledge of policy.  Granted, policy isn’t a hot’n'sexy topic for most people, but I like it.

• Good job to Mark Hobbs for his defense of a momentarily speechless opponent against utterly bizarre and provably false accusations.

• Speaking of crazy, John Hillman posted some videos of the AGM.  I recommend Video #4 in particular, the crazy butterfly guy was everything they said he was and more.

• Today’s Gazette is the election edition; I hear basketball made the cover but the elections goodness is inside.  I am looking forward to the coverage; as you know, the Gazette is a bastion of accuracy and fact-checking, unlike punditry.ca where the lies and filth drip from the walls.  For now you need to be on campus to drink from its papery goodness, but when the online edition goes up some time in April I’ll be sure to let you know.

• If you missed the Election Candidate Video Awards or Mark’s discussion of DSU AGMs, go read.

• Student Appreciation Night is Friday night.  I’ll be sure to save column inches for that.

• Not much action on the candidate blogs.  Will Horne conceded my point from last night, and then I stopped reading. I kid, of course: I read with interest his thoughts on NSPIRG.  Re: DSU vs NSPIRG, fyi there have been relationship problems there for as long as I’ve been on campus.  Every few years things come to a head.  Obviously I agree this is not the way it should be, but just want to make you aware this is not a recent development.

• Re: “As a student I’ll say this: what I want is peace on the issue…and a glaringly obvious opt-out period.”  I don’t want to turn this into a page discussing the usefulness of NSPIRG, but I see inherent conflict in that statement.  NSPIRG has vigorously opposed the opt-out from day one.  In my day at least, every few years they would try to get out of it, typically by just not offering an opt-out period and seeing if anyone would notice.  If you pursue an improved opt-out process, you will not get peace.  
  Actually, I once tried to opt out.  I was doing an internship out of town, and emailed to ask how to do it.  They said I couldn’t.  Not being accustomed to taking “no” for an answer, I persisted.  They emailed me some heinous attachment that was very difficult to open and told me to fill out the form.  I did.  They said they wouldn’t send me money but I could come in person once I was back in town to pick it up.  I did.  They told me they couldn’t give me my money right then, but that I should come back.  I did.  The person who could help me wasn’t there.  I never did get my $2.  Remind me to send them an invoice.

• Per his blog, Eric Snow added items specific to graduate students to his platform.  This is remarkable on two levels: a) a candidate listened to students and updated their platform? Surprisingly, this is rare.  b) a candidate made grad-related issues part of their platform?  Normally that distinction is reserved for the graduate senator.  As a grad student I should be doing more to call candidates out on this issue, and I’m about to start.  If any other candidates have positions or thoughts on grad students, I’d recommend following Eric’s lead and sharing them, soon.

• 139 new comments, and more page views than yesterday (6500 from 900 unique visitors).

I should preface this by clarifying that while the title of this entry is “AGM Video Highlights,” the highlights essentially consist of the salvageable  clips I pulled off of my camera. I need to point two big problems with the camera:

1) It could not hold more than 4 minutes of footage at a time, after which I had to transfer everything to my computer. Thus, if you are looking for your  awesome quip or amazing display of constitutional mastery, I probably missed it.

2) The lighting was atrocious, and the camera is primarily intended for taking pictures, not videos.  The audio came out pretty clear, but the only decent video is of poor Mat and the executives, who were standing under sufficient lighting.

All of that said, some footage is better than nothing, right? For those of you who missed out, the following should give you a taste of the atmosphere if nothing else.  For an amazing recap of the night, see Jen Bond’s post below (though since it has 100+ comments, I’m sure that you already have!)

Here goes.

Bethany, Greg, and the Fuzz:

Early in the evening, HRM police officers showed up on behalf of the DSU to remove King’s student/Gazette reporter/punditry.ca frequenter Bethany Horne from the meeting.  Much drama ensued, as you might imagine. Greg Debogorski was livid, and got himself in a heap of trouble, as you all know.  I filmed a few segments of the incident, though the lighting at the back of the room was horrible, and the sound system drowned out much of the dialogue. If you turn up the sound on your computer you should be able to catch most of it.

Video 1

Moments before this next video, Greg called the students voting to eject Bethany a bunch of Nazis. Guess how that turned out.

Video 2

The Battle for The McInnes:

After the drama involving the police passed, things continued to heat up. Watch as rival motions duel for student support!  Scream in frustration as the camera cuts out in horrible places!

Video 3

The move to the ballot vote begins, and much uncertainty accompanies it. Out of nowhere, a mystery man with a story to tell challenges the chair. I swear, I wasn’t laughing in the background – it’s just some bizarre static…

Video 4

The excitement continues as Butterfly man fails to sway the non-high portion of the crowd, and we go to a ballot vote. Jen Bond races against time to find ballots, as apparently the organizers of this AGM failed to anticipate the chance that there might be some controversy over the vote count  in a room packed full of 200 angry people voting on highly controversial issues by a show of hands. Go figure.

Video 5

Finally, the shocking conclusion to the AGM highlight reel. Mark Coffin lets out the beast within!

Video 6

So there you have it – a night of good wholesome fun. I would encourage everyone to bring cameras of their own on April 1st. Some body armour wouldn`t hurt either.

The Annual General Meeting has been a heated topic of discussion on this board for the last day and a half. I’m going to put off posting on the elections race for now and explain to you why I believe the Annual General Meeting, as it is currently laid out in our constitution, to be largely undemocratic. I would also like to give credit to SMUSA’s VP External (who may read this) for allowing me to bounce this idea off of him, and I know I’ve incorporated some of his ideas into my argument.

—
Student associations are a unique beast in the not-for-profit world. In non-student not-for-profit organizations (and a few student associations), an AGM is used for the following purposes:

• Electing an executive (or officers) and a board (or council) 
• Hearing reports from the Executive (essentially, informing the membership)
• Carrying out specific duties as specified in the organizations constitution through motions that are presented at an AGM 

The DSU (like most student organizations) elects their executive by online voting (formerly by paper ballot), and we make no specific mention in our constitution as to what authority the membership at an AGM has. The current interpretation is that the membership present at an AGM has the authority to make motions binding this year’s executive and council only.

Right now anyone can get any motions on the agenda with sufficient notice. With the assumption that the AGM membership can overule council and executive, these motions can be quite significant ones that drastically affect the way our union runs.  

What’s wrong with this is the fact that in a student population of 16 500, we know we cannot accomodate all of our members should they wish to attend our AGM.  We know that the capacity of our largest room is less than the number of individuals who participate in our annual elections. 

Some might put forth the “decisions are made by those who show up”  argument.  But, we also know that no matter what date and time we choose for an AGM,  we will be restricting access of certain individuals from attending or staying for the entire meeting. In addition to this, we know that groups on both sides of many motions made concerted efforts to stack supporters specifically to argue their side. The ability to mobilize is not the same as the ability to form a majority in a true democracy. 

We have already recognized these facts as a union by running our elections online an not at the AGM, and council recognizes it by sending important questions like the Health Plan Referendum and society levies through a referendum that is equally accessible to all through an online ballot. 

If we (the collective membership present at the next AGM) were truly concerned about upholding real democratic principles we would ammend the constitution (already on the agenda, don’t shit your pants Mat) and rectify the current travesty of democracy that exists under the AGM section. Doing this would leave the AGM as an opportunity for the membership present to: 

• Hear the reports of the executive; 
• Ask questions of the executive; and
• Be able to vote on clearly defined types of motions none of which have the capacity to seriously affect the operations of our union. 

I’m not saying that the membership should not have the ability to vote on important issues. I’m saying that they should, but I don’t feel that the polarized groups that show up at an AGM are the ones that should be entrusted with that power alone. Truly important questions should be included in an online referenda slate and the opportunity to vote in them should be disgustingly accessible. 

I do, however, have one question about how such a new system would work. Who would determine what questions go to referendum. My inclination is that the AGM membership would have the specific power to put any referendum question on the annual election ballot. The DSU council and board would also retain this ability.

• Today the excitement of the election took a back seat to the DSU Annual General Meeting. It was covered in depth here, before and during. Jen promoted it, then live-blogged it, Lisa twittered it, readers commented on it, and punditry.ca broke.  I won’t do a recap, but I highly recommend Jen’s liveblogging and the ensuing 97 comments.

• Kudos to Mat Brechtel, chair of Council and therefore chair of the AGM.  Managing debate and trying to maintain some amount of decorum in a highly-charged atmosphere is no small task.  Maybe for April 1 they can get you one of those classroom performance systems for vote recording.  I read on Lisa’s twitter that the “chair enters Council Chambers to thunderous applause from Council”, and that applause was well deserved.

• Apparently there was vandalism in the SUB during/after the AGM, along the lines of the DSU being fascist (unconfirmed reports).  The expectation of an organization that it take instruction from people who hate it and everything about it is something I suspect is unique to student associations.  Most people who hate a given organization just want said organization to leave them alone.  (e.g., people who hate the federal government want to be left alone to collect guns and hate black people).

• William Horne made an interesting point on his blog, saying “could be just the particular turnout last night, but it seems to me that Dalhousie students are far more polarized that I had previously realized”.  I reflected on that, then decided I disagreed.  Polarized in the context of politics means opposite ends of the political spectrum.  I’ll grant that the anti-war, anti-corporation, etc. viewpoints are near enough the polar end of the traditional “left-wing” side of politics.  But the right-wing-as-used-today view was not well-represented in that room.  If that room had elected a federal government, the Liberal party would look right-wing.  And I don’t know what Student Appreciation Nights are like these days, but even a small fraction of the ones in my day would convince you moral/family values aren’t at the top of the agenda of campus student leaders.  If anything, the polarity of DSU policies has shifted to the left in recent years.  Take a look at campaign material from 2005 and tell me how many times you use the word “sustainbility”. 
    The other use of polarized is to take opposite sides on an issue: pro-peanuts, anti-peanuts.  Taking for example an anti-war motion, those who opposed it at the AGM aren’t saying “war is awesome”.  They are saying, for example, “war sucks, but it’s pretty far out of our mandate as a student union”.
    I also think it probably WAS the particular turnout; the “people who came to the AGM in support of a particular agenda (be it *for* or *against* the motions)” demographic are a terrible sample set of Dal students.  It’s hard to be polarized when you don’t care.
    Though I disagreed in the end, Horne asked a good question that inspired thought, and I appreciate that.

• One interesting indirect outcome of the AGM is a petition aimed at taking away NSPIRG’s funding, promoted on a new website, www.stopnspirg.org.

• Debogorski was levied two fines tonight, for asserting/implying that people were Nazis.  One was out loud during the AGM, and the other was on punditry.ca after he was removed from the SUB by the police.

• Ok, that’s it for the AGM.

• You might have missed it in the AGM excitement, but candidate posters are available online, though the conversation seems to have boiled down to AmIHotOrNot.

• Sexton debate coverage is not up to Lisa’s level, but I do want to follow-up on last night’s wrap-up.  I congratulated Simms on finding answers to a question he hadn’t been able to answer at the Carleton debate, and said I suspected Evans & Blake could do the same.  The results are in: Evans nailed it, Simms was shaky but got the gist of it, and Glenn Blake didn’t know much more but still wanted to learn.  Two out of three ain’t bad, and Blake will have another shot at demonstrating this willingness to learn at the Thursday debate  (SUB, noon).

• I’ve tried to keep this locked up, but the rage is just too much.  I have a weakness: I cannot read text without spotting most spelling and grammar errors.  This makes my thrice-daily rounds of candidate websites extraordinarily painful.  Forget knowing how to spell, and a typo is a typo, but when did we stop teaching people how to use a spell checker?  If you can’t spell and you don’t have a web browser that spell checks as you type, get one.  Surely you all have noticed this as well:

Edgar Burns: “I Belive they would be well attended … If u have any others then please feel free to email…”
Rob LeForte escapes my wrath, but he also has been writing less than the other candidates.

Shannon Zimmerman: “This is more then just better communication” is fairly prominent, but not bad.
Eric Snow: “encouraged to see so many Sexton students ask very thought prevoking question”, but generally not bad or at least quickly corrected.
Gregory Debogorski: … I don’t need to present evidence here, right?

Hobbs: “maitenance”, “simple terms that is”, “debate on the much contentious issue”, “Studly debate”
Craig Jennex escapes my wrath, plus gets bonus points for spelling “camaraderie” correctly.

• Most candidates have Facebook groups to which they’ve invited all and sundry.  I wrote a little script, as I am prone to do, and it tells me how many members are in each group:

• punditry.ca served an astounding 6,000 pages to 550 unique visitors today.

• Yesterday I was impressed with 53 comments; the total as of midnight-ish was 240 comments.

Wow.

What a day.

More in the wrap-up, but for now: you guys BROKE punditry.ca.  Twice.  My numbers show the server was running at 300% of its estimated capacity before its untimely demise.  It’s not running on a huge server, but it’s only role in life is to serve up a few web pages, exclusively for punditry.ca.

When I set up the server, I paid little-to-no attention to performance.  This is my fourth year at this, I know what the traffic looks like: a few thousand page views each day, spread throughout the whole day with a slight peak in the evening.  More was possible, but improbable.

Haha.

Not so much.

Because then crazy happened.

It was actually only about 50 page loads a minute sustained over an hour, but a few minor problems compounded into a situation that ended with me cutting the power to the server.  It’s a phenomenon broadly called thrashing.  Wikipedia has a crappy article about it, but if you’ve read Jurassic Park you’ll already be familiar with the concept as expressed in Ian Malcom’s iterations:

1. At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.
2. With subsequent drawings of the fractal curve, sudden changes may appear.
3. Details emerge more clearly as the fractal curve is redrawn.
4. Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear.
5. Flaws in the system will now become severe.
6. System recovery may prove impossible.
7. Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face it’s implications.

And then BAM, a velociraptor eats you.

Anyway, too many visitors is a problem I’m happy to have, but not one that cursing at your monitor will solve, a fact I verified tonight as I tried to get the server to listen to me.

With the help of an experienced friend and a lot of experimentation, I think we’ve tamed it.  You might find it is a bit faster, but nothing else should be different (if it is, let me know).  Mostly, it has a higher capacity and in the worst-case will fail nicely instead of just dying.   If there’s a spike in visits, it will take pages a bit longer to load, but the server won’t die a horrible death.

Punditry.ca will be here to meet your future needs; do whatever you want, it can handle it.

Mr. Debogorski offers the following statement as an open letter to AGM attendees:

To whom I may have offended during the course of the Dalhousie Student Union’s
annual general meeting on March 11, 2009-

I have spent the last few hours contemplating a comment I made during the course
of the meeting. After an in depth analysis of my morals, philosophies, and
empathy for my colleagues I have concluded that I owe a deep apology to
approximately 78 individuals. I made the statement during a democratic vote
that those voting for the removal of an editor of the Gazette supported Nazism.
My apology stems from the three principles as follows:

First, I am deeply embarrassed at the academic inaccuracy of my statement. My
mother always told me to think before I speak. I can claim that I did just
that, but the picture that came to my mind as I thought fascism was of the Nazi
regime. I pictured the press being drug out of political meetings by police; I
made a parallel to the occurrence in the room at the time. Then as I intended
to state “those who support this are supporting fascism”, I replaced fascism
with Nazism in my wording.
I realise the immense difference in both academic and moral connotation between
the two. It was an incorrect and unfair statement. This does not excuse my slip
of the tongue, nor does it free me from the shame it bears. I apologise.

Second, I have a very deep lingering guilt because of conflicting democratic
morals that have resulted in one weighing more than another. I will explain. In
making the statement, while the vote was occurring, I justified the action
based on the principles “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech”. I
thought there was an unnecessary and unwarranted oppression on diverse
perspective of the Gazette by removing the opinion’s editor from the meeting.
This justification clashes with a very fundamental moral and philosophical
principle I hold dear- “freedom of thought”. In making the statement, at the
moment it was made, I essentially oppressed other’s opinions. This was unjust
and undemocratic. Therefore, it was immoral in my opinion. I had no right
making the statement at the moment I did. Again and then again, I apologise for
such an undemocratic and unjust act.

Third, and most importantly, I lacked empathy in my words aimed at my
colleagues. At approximately 11:30pm, after the meeting, I arrived at the
entrance to the DSU SUB. Outside I saw a group of students and asked about the
outcome of the meeting. After hearing the results, I asked if people were
offended by my statement. One of the five students seemed emotional upset over
the statement. I was shocked and ashamed by this revelation. My mother always
told me that I should never be ashamed to stand up for what I believe in.
Because of this, other people’s opinions of my beliefs do not bother or affect
me. Perhaps I am insensitive to others because of this; this is a flaw I will
work on. In making the statement, using the incorrect adjective, I have upset
my colleagues without any justification. Again, again, and again I apologise.

I have learned from my mistake and will remember it.
I hereby pledge that such a hurtful statement will not slip from tongue at
another student function again.

Remorseful,

 

Gregory Debogorski