The future of student government
An inside view of next year sASUN parties and platforms
ASUN can be fun.
I learned this over the past few
months, following the student govern
ment elections for the first time in my
collegiate career.
And like the pigskin prognostica
tors who quickly predict next year’s
No. 1 right after the bowl season ends,
I’m revved up for next year’s round of
political parties. Call me a junkie.
With fervent investigation, I’ve
already uncovered some of2001 ’s
early front-runners and even found
some insight on their platforms.
Without further hesitation:
Party: Apocalypse
Slogan: Disillusioned? Vote for
Dissolution.
Skinny: An assist goes to our car
toonist Neal Obermeyer, who over
heard from a friend of Planarian Man
that this party would be attempting to
abolish student government altogether.
The remaining hinds would go toward
paying for student football tickets. A
move like this would set back UNL to
the 1850s, before the university ever
opened. Traditionalists ought to love it.
Says Obermeyer: “Come 2001, the
end is here.”
Party: Hoax
Slogan: You won’t know until elec
tion day what we really stand for.
Skinny: With its idea of a “rotating
platform,” Hoax is in favor of a policy
one week, then retracts its support,
arguing that its original stance was
merely a hoax.
Party: EDSW
Slogan: And let’s not forget about
the disease-spreading whore...
Skinny: Borrowed from Kevin
Spacey’s diatribe in “Seven,” EDSW
stands for the Eradication of Disease
Spreading Whores, male or female,
through the process of verbal and
physical sparring on campus. Health
organizations have given tentative sup
port, just as long as condoms are
involved. Shunning is optional.
Party: B Movie
Slogan: Pom? Why not?
Skinny: Word has it that members
will run on a platform that includes a
brand new sex film department, with
an emphasis on recruiting freshmen.
Most of it will take place outside, thus
saving on light costs.
Party: Empower2
Slogan: Finally, an
incumbent.Well sort of.
Skinny: Empower representatives
make an unprecedented move for a
second run, changing the student
bylaws to open up the opportunity.
Student political experts from Harvard,
Yale and Wake Forest would descend
upon Lincoln to study the effects of
such a regime.
On election day, the party could
pass out cucumbers, which is pretty
close to incumbent. Sort of.
Party: Crouch
Slogan: Let’s face it: Only one
candidate can deliver in the two
minute offense.
Skinny: There might be record
turnouts for a party headed by
Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch,
who passed out campaign hats last
year to his offensive linemen to test the
political waters. When Coach Frank
Solich was asked if Crouch could han
dle the double-duty, he answered,
“Certainly.”
When Solich was asked to
expound, he said: “Certainly.”
Party: Wino
Slogan: You know what this cam
pus really needs? A liquor store for
winos.
Skinny: Wino keeps the campus
dry, but opens a booze shop in the
Union for poor winos to raise a few
extra bucks. Food stamps accepted.
Booze types will be site-specific -
East Campus will deal in moonshine
and urine-based alcohol only.
Party: Bun Stays in the Oven
Slogan: Because everyone thinks
we re right-wing fascist freaks, we had
to come up with a name confusing and
humorous enough to lure you into our
freakish, right-wing party (By the way
we’re anti-abortion).
Skinny: The buns stay in the oven.
All other household appliances and
pastries are burned in effigy.
Party: Mountain Rocket
Slogan: There is no benefit to
building a mountain rocket.
Skinny: ASUN diverts all student
fees toward the construction of a huge
mountain rocket, a luge-like vehicle
capable of shooting up the sheer face
of mountains. There is no benefit to
building a mountain rocket. In fact,
there may be no way to build one. The
party is gaining early support for their
being mavericks.
Party: Doghouse
Slogan: Fishpond, only bigger.
Dumber, too. But we don’t lick boots.
Skinny: Takes Canfield
Administration building and revamps
it into a giant kennel. Preferably, the
dogs will be limited to golden retriev
ers only.
Party: The Danny Nee Revolution
Slogan: Screw you! (Director’s cut
available online).
Skinny: Return Danny Nee to his
rightful place as Nebraska’s basketball
coach. Lobby to gain Tyronn Lue suc
cessful entrance back into college,
while pillaging the Nebraska football
team for bodies.
Party: The Elites
Slogan: A government of, by and
for the elite people on campus.
Skinny: Status quo. Or, at least, it
was.
Samuel McKewon is a junior political science major and a Daily Nebraskan editor.
People get lost for hours at a
time, their eyes practically glued to
their screens as they zone out and
over-focus, praying for some
moment of clarity to reach out from
the monitor and club them to death
until their corpses lie, lifeless and
still before their machines, so that1
their tombstones can read “Died
Onlinp ”
They might as well be thumping
the veins in their arms and plugging
the mouse right in (saves time on
interfacing), eyes pried open with
toothpicks so that the information
superhighway has no offramps, and
they can drift along on cruise control
when the pilot’s light goes out.
Lethargic. Inert. Jacked-in,
surfed-out and definitely online.
The new drug on the street isn’t
injected - it’s uploaded.
It could happen to any one of us.
We’ll have to fight them off like
gatekeepers of the Information Free
Age, making sure the lemmings pay
the full price of admission if they
want the insides of their skulls back.
The symptoms are easy to
ignore, simple to overlook and far
too subtle to be noticed by the
untrained eye. One too many
moments checking e-mail, the con
stant rapping of fingertips across
particle-board desktop while waiting
for a download, the mutter of “I need
more power” under one’s breath. It
seems like just another Net denizen,
but look closer and it’s all going out
of focus.
Oh yes, you can see it in their
eyes if you’re willing to peel back
their eyelids and pin ’em against the
wall. Those bloodshot orbs will peer
back at you aimlessly, waiting for
their screensavers to overtake the
perception of you. You’ll know
they’re already gone, and it could be
too late for anything other than a
shutdown.
Fear and loathing in cyberspace
New drug on the street not injected but uploaded
My own personal digital hell
began a long time ago, back in the
erstwhile days of my youth I’ve tried
so desperately to forget. I began my
hacker days as a scrapling on an
Omaha system called Citinet.
BBSs, or bulletin board systems,
were the early days of the Internet
revolution, when people were scrap
ing by on machines with 64kb of
memory and the idea of gigahertz
was only in some engineer’s dreams.
You had to dial up through the phone
line, and even then, the technology
was new and untested, making us
feel like whoever it was in the first
submarine.
The lunatic who talked my folks
and me into bringing this addiction
into our house told us the educa
tional uses of Citinet were limit
less. But, like all used-car
salesmen, he never let us look
under the hood until
we bought and
found those
promises
empty and
shallow.
Instead,
I found an
outlet for my
creative writ
ing, a place
where my imagi
nation was nurtured and
applauded, known only by
six letters that made up my
handle.
Clicks.
Sure, it sounds odd, being
referred to as Clicks, but
think of the alternative - most
user names were set up to be
your first initial and your last
name, and I couldn’t, and still
can’t, envision being referred to
as Chicks for the rest of my
life.
Damn those who
spawned me into this
world for inflicting
such a ruthless torture upon
me and then later, upon my
younger brother.
Oh, hi Mom. Ignore that.
The Citinet era took up a good
three years of my life, although
Citinet folded after only a year or so.
Everyone moved to another system,
Chatisfaction, but it was still part of
the same groove as far as anyone
could tell.
I jackrabbited out of the local
scene only a few years after the
Citinet empire crumbled beneath its
own aspirations. And I stayed clean
for many years. No modem tracks on
my veins, not until my e-mail habits
overtook me, but I’m getting ahead
of myself. Let’s
talk about
someone
else’s
Megan Cody/DN
prob
lems a moment.
A few years ago, an online game
known as Evcrquest sprang up, and
suddenly people vanished from
classrooms, workplaces, even social
existence.
Instead of living their normal
lives, people across the world began
spending time playing a virtual game
of warriors and dragons, planning
their social calendar around their
Everquest lives.
Just a few short months ago, one
of my old friends told me that, while
he would indeed be in town for a few
days, he couldn’t go out during them.
“Dude, I can’t. It’d cut into my
Everquest time,” he said. “Besides,
I’m supposed to meet some friends
online. We’re going to take down a
golem tonight.”
ne s mau, oi course.
We, of the sane
portion of the Net,
call it EverCrack,
and those trapped in
its icy grasp are
EverCrackers.
There’s
supposed to
be humor in
that some
where, I
think.
Even
though I
avoided
EverCrack, 1
can’t deny that I’m
getting sucked
back into my
online addic
l tion. Mine
9 takes shape,
however, in
the form of
eBay, an
on-line
flea mar
ket where
people buy
and sell.
And we
kill sneaky
bidders.
For the
most part,
eBay is com
posed ofhon
esi people
making honest deals, but there are a
few shady characters. We often call
them snipers.
In the last four minutes of an auc
tion, many times a user will try to
swoop down, bidding $.50 more than
the high bidder in an attempt to
snatch it away.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve
found myself whispering, “Damn —
you, jazman87. I’ll get you yet,” like
some b-grade villain with a wax
tipped mustache.
My e-mail habit is just as bad, as
I need to tap into my two accounts at
least once every five hours. Even in
my sleep, I rise like Lazarus from the
grave, eyes still closed, and 1 pan
tomime the motions at my computer,
checking my e-mail, even though I
can’t read it in my slumber.
Even junk mail becomes a
moment of excitement now, simply
because it’s a symbol, a badge of
pride that says I exist in a world I
cannot touch, a world made up of lit
tle 1 s and Os, and inside that world I
have a widespread identity, a claim
to fame, like a dog pissing on its ter
ritory during its daily walk.
I was here, dammit, and don’t
forget it.
/\na yet, i can sun pry myseu
away from the machine for a time.
I’m not so owned by my machine
that I cannot flee from the tendrils of
its control. A day or two can pass,
and I’m not twitching, but maybe a
little edgy.
I’ve got it under control. Really.
But not all are so lucky.
Have we gone too far? Are we
lost in the downward spiral of our
own madness and obsession, unable
to separate ourselves from our termi
nals for even a moment, long enough
to change our caffeine drips?
Perhaps we should proclaim a
national holiday - National Power
Down Day. Pull the plug, and inter
act with others in real life.
Until that day arrives, until the
docile information-bloated masses of
society are given some kind of elec
tro-shock therapy that kicks them in
the ass, then the EverCrackers and
eBay snipers will keep the flame
alive, the power line on, the circuitry
sparking.
Jacked In. Surfed Out.
End of line.
The journalism guerrilla typed
this on a computer. Reach him at
journ alistic wa rfa re(a h o tm a il. com.
Cliff Hicks is a senior news-editorial major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.