I’m going to resist the urge to write endlessly about the recent ASUC election. So indulge me this one more post.

For those not paying attention, the gist is that the party that won the election (by a strong majority) got disqualified for blatantly breaking the rules. After various threats of lawsuit, the party then decided not to try to win their case on appeal in the ASUC’s Judicial system and instead simply declared themselves the winners. They’ve tried to make it all seem very official, using the tortured logic of a third world dictator ala Woody Allen’s Bananas. Basically, rather than risk losing the election, they’ve decided to play a game of chicken where the entire student government could be destroyed if people refuse to get out of their way.

Here’s what bugs me so much about all this: It was so unecessary. Student Action pulled a Nixon. They easily won the election, didn’t even need to campaign, and yet they still decided that when push came to shove, they were gonna lie and cheat as much as they could. I understand their anger over being disqualified, especially since they won most of the races so handily, but this wasn’t some outside oppression. They did it to themselves by deciding to, rather than cooperating and probably getting a lightweight sentence, lie as much as they could to the judicial council. Not only that, but for those who remember, they also tried to get Igor disqualified with fake testimony and dirty tricks.

It was just all so pointless. Hell, even now when they’re trying to destroy the ASUC and steal the government at all costs, they still could’ve waited to see whether they won their case on appeal. SA is acting like they’ve been persecuted by some minority of justices or individuals, but the truth is that this has all been caused by their refusal to follow simple rules. Rules they didn’t even need to break. I can’t emphasize this enough; if they just behaved sensibly, just acted like any reasonable person would, I’m more than certain they’d all be legitimately in office right now planning their agenda for the next year. Instead they decided to lie and cheat at every possible moment. I don’t want to blame their entire executive slate for this because who knows what actually went on in their strategy discussions, but someone somewhere has serious Nixon-like dementia and decided that winning while completely destroying the system would be a better outcome than just winning.