Elecciones
Congratulations to Dom McKoy for being the 1st sophomore (junior next year) to be elected for a student body office in a long time. I should have run for something, but to class elections it is for me. All of the speeches were painfully bad... no offense to anyone, but they were. And for the second year in a row too! I'm starting to dislike the direction that Lovelin is taking Leadership. Rather than my vision of semi-corporate-style brainstorming sessions and doing interesting and tangible things, it's kind of turning into something like "let's improve our leadership skills through expensive seminars and camps, then trying to unify people through 'spirit-building' activities, and use our crappy useless new knowledge to continue to do the same boring things slightly differently." I realized that it was time to resist when Lovelin started talking about "leadership camps" over the summer. It's all too people-oriented and not idea-oriented enough. We should be spending more time thinking of ideas for doing, rather than interpersonal relations building. It's not that the latter is not of use, it's just that I find it miserably boring and generally useless. So support the cult of thought and ideas, not... whatever the heck this other thing might be called. But to give Lovelin some credit, he is making the whole affair more student-run, and cleaning up the disastrous mess of laziness and ineffectiveness that is the legacy of the former activities director.
adam, i have to disagree with you on this leadership direction thing. this year we got nowhere, and i think that all we need is some better leadership skills to really take charge. we wouldn't be dedicating all of our time towards working on these skills, that would just be on the side. i for one am excited.
I hate to sound like a heartless Mr. Jaggers or psychotic social-Darwinist, but I think the key to the improvement of leadership is removal of "dead wood." An attempt to purge the ineffective and lazy from leadership through a fundamental cultural change of the class (i.e. from a class where not showing is totally admissible, to one where non-participation is totally unadmissible). Lovelin's already part of the way there, but it's going to take more new people who are not burdened by the old ideas of laziness. Essentially transform leadership from a largely obnoxious group of popularity-elected bozos, to a group of artistic, intelligent, and dedicated individuals. But then again, the fundamental problem with democratic systems is that they appeal to the masses, who may not have the best judgement on the proper course for a society. Explained in US history-terms, it's like the difference between the Harding administration and the Kennedy administration.
Mahan's speech sounded like an internet forward that I delete weekly. Two others sounded like they had their speeches word by word memorized and came across as very insincere.
Carl Larson should have been the ASB president!!!
Yeah, he probably should have. I admit it, I voted for Mahan, simply because I had already told him I would, and I sit next to him in math. Plus, he's a good student, and I think his speech was simply his giving in to the fact that most of the student body is not impressed by big ideas, but simply by being funny. But I'm sure he'll do a decent job.