USG senator:Caring what goes on around this campus is risky business. Be careful if you dare because there are so many types of battle grounds to learn before one attempts combat.
February 20, 1996
Lets take the Housing Food Service for example. There is a union in charge there in case everyone didn’t know. There are as many opinions about unions as there are stars in the heavens. According to Dr. Guyon, for example, our University pays $90,000.00 a month, for 7 months of the year to cut the grass on this campus. Can anyone imagine how many inner city kids we could educate for those sums if we out-sourced the grass cutting jobs? Why, one wonders, is this fact lost to Dr. Guyon? Unions!
For the most part, and I would use most of the union employees of the Student Center as an example, union members are usually the most highly trained and qualified people that money can buy. Even the grass cutters truly know what they are doing. Quality control is second to no one else at the Student Center. But, if the union members of University Housing Food service could cook with the quality of a ten-year-old child, life on-campus would improve measurably. One would think that a University Housing director would have a lawful duty to report the truth of his employees, competence to the Board of our University, before they went and contracted with such a group of people. But Mr. Jones stood up before the student body recently and declared that this University makes Housing policy and contracts with Housing employees without the advice and consent of their Housing director.
One is left wondering what the point of having a Housing director is? A paradox of truisms which seems to have been lost on the employees and editors of the Daily Egyptian and our student president, Miss Clemens.
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While we are on the topic of the Egyptian employees, my fellow inmates should be very careful what they read inside the pages of this literary dumpster. With a few notable exceptions, the students who write the editorials don’t investigate what they are writing about. They don’t show up at the meetings. When they call people like this writer to find out what is going on, one is left playing teacher, because the so-called reporter is clueless. It is much like the words to that song from the movie the Sound of Music. Let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start.
Most seriously, what is ultimately written has little to do with the truth. Why? Because the reporter doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the students of this University. He doesn’t care that the administrators of this University lie about their conduct, that they seem unable to even comply with the laws of Illinois. Catching the lies doesn’t take much of an effort if one simply tries to. They don’t try because they don’t care. What they care about is meeting a deadline, and to do so, few of them ever leave the newsroom. The crapola that is printed is the end result.
It has been suggested by the so-called editorial board of this literary giant that I have something to apologize for. The day someone can point to some measure of gain I might have from all of this – when I am no longer able to stand on the truth – when the ethics or morals of the situation are less than most obvious, then and only then will I have something to apologize for. Until then, the editors will be so kind as to keep their hypocrisy to themselves.
For the over-21 students:I promise you that I did try my very best to deal with your housing situation. Unfortunately, it looks like my best wasn’t good enough. For this I am very sorry. It would seem that I have let you all down. I will try to better next time.
Ensor is an USG senator representing Southern Hills.
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