Student elections

Why should I vote in student elections? Both of their colors (piss-stain post-it note yellow and Taco Bell barf orange) give me a major headache. If they can’t pick cool colors to run under, how can I trust either of them to allocate my student fee money? I demanded answers, I got them, but still I was disappointed.

What’s your name? (I attempt to talk to someone from the Klute/Johns slate.)
Kayla Goldfarb: Do not get interviewed! He’ll make you sound stupid! Have you read his column? I always do this every time you’re around, I’m going to throw someone –

 

Who is that? What’s his name?
KG: His name is Bob. Why don’t you find someone who’s not involved? Get them involved! (Attempts to pass out flyer.) Have you heard of student elections coming up next week?

 

Can I ask you why – ?
(To passer-by.) Have you heard about student elections coming up?

 

Why have you chosen the color yellow?
KG: You pull these things out of your ass!

 

Yeah? And? Why is the “Cloot”/Johns slate – ?
KG: “Klute.”

 

Why is it the color yellow?
KG: Do you like the color yellow?

 

I don’t like any of the colors.
KG: Why don’t you ask her (motions to Courtney Morse) why she chose orange – I didn’t choose the color. (To another passer-by) Have you heard about student elections coming up next week?

Passer-by: I’m not a student.

 

Why did you choose orange?
Courtney Morse: Because orange is successful and it wasn’t yellow. Green was the last year’s one and blue was like progressive two years back and so there’s like a lot of history behind the colors.

 

There’s plusses to the colors and kind of, I guess, minuses –
CM: That would be the opposite of plusses.

– to having these two colors, see Morse/Bufton, you got the orange, it reminds me of like Halloween, you know? Fun! I don’t really pay attention to the issues, I just go by like color and well – stuff – like last year I voted for the person that was the least irritating-
CM: Yeah totally! Devaney/Woon! I ran on their slate. I’m trying to be less irritating.

 

But I don’t know, I’m just going by color.
CM: You should be careful because we allocate $8 million in student fees.

 

That’s good, so I could start like the uh – smoking club? Maybe?
CM: Yeah, you could essentially but we’re also gonna like take your money and figure out what to do with it. You should definitely care about what issues people are running on.

 

The minuses to your color, I must say it kind of reminds me of like fajita barf?
CM: You still think of fajitas, which are generally popular amongst common college culture, so there you go! No, seriously, there’s a lot of history behind the colors and so you have to be careful, like we don’t want to do green because it was Barron/Craven, we didn’t want to do blue because it was Maude and Polly which was progressive slate two years ago. We didn’t want to do goldenrod because that was Devaney/Woon and –

 

Why not periwinkle?
CM: It’s not bright enough, you have to have text and pictures on your color and it has to be bright enough to bring that out.

 

I don’t even know what periwinkle is.
CM: Oh, I’m wearing a periwinkle sweatshirt. Periwinkle is great. I can pull it off.

 

What about sky-blue or something?
CM: Like I said, blue, progressive slate two years ago –

(My friend Kelsey interrupts.) What about lavender?

CM: Purple, not bright enough. We actually just strolled through Kinko’s and picked out our color.

 

So you didn’t really-
CM: Well, it was like we can’t do this because of “that and that” so we just picked orange, it’s a little less obnoxious than yellow and not as like dark but still like stand-out and be buff.

 

One thing I must say about your slate is that I’m not too irritated, so you might have my vote or you might not – at my old community college, Mt. Hood, they would give ice cream to get people to vote in student elections because people are pretty apathetic. Will PSU offer ice cream to vote?
CM: I think there are rules. You can’t give things away; would I offer ice cream? Yes, because ice cream in general brings happiness and it would get people to talk to us, I would just give ice cream to people and tell them to vote for us but I would actually make them stand with their ice cream and make them talk to us about the issues.

 

Do you have a cigarette?
CM: I don’t. I could probably find you one. People are friendly here. You could probably bum one off of them.

 

Why don’t you use purple as your color?
Ana Johns: I was thinking about that, and purple is so hard to see. You would have to be very specific like purple but yellow is good, like a high-intensity color.

 

It is when I see it, it reminds me of like lemons and it to me it’s kind of like neon, so it’s kind of like raver, so like a party! Klute/Johns are like the party slate. Are you party people?
AJ: Um, I wouldn’t categorize us as party people –
(My friend Kelsey again.) Do you guys do ecstasy?

AJ: No, we don’t do ecstasy. Well I can’t speak for everyone on my slate. I don’t do ecstasy! But I’m sure people have a good time on it.

Kelsey: Do you ever do any other kind of methamphetamine?

AJ: No, I don’t have time.

 

With meth you could do all kinds of stuff.
Kelsey: You don’t have to sleep or eat or anything.

AJ: Yeah, go pass some bills, do some campaigning. Maybe I’ll look into that.

 

Well also the downside of this color, it kind of reminds me of like pee.
AJ: Really?

 

Yeah, I mean it’s yellow.
Kelsey: It reminds me of yellow snow.

 

Yeah, don’t eat the yellow snow! I’m not really paying attention to the issues and last year I voted for the ones that irritated me the least. I like voting because I like filling out surveys, and it was like a shot in the dark kind of thing –
AJ: I like filling out surveys too.

 

The thing that I have a problem with the Klute/Johns slate is that flyer, that “Brady Bunch”-themed thing, the “SFC Bunch.” I’m sorry, that’s kind of retarded.
AJ: Really?

 

I think so.
AJ: Well, here’s the thing with that. It’s difficult to get the message out to students sometimes you have to try new things, that was the SFC, sometimes you fail and sometimes you win and that was a failure in some people’s eyes. Some people commented and said they really liked it so we can’t please all 24,000 students on campus. I’m sorry it’s offensive to your aesthetic.

 

Yeah, I’m just not a fan of the “Brady Bunch,” I just think the “Brady Bunch” is the worst television show –
AJ: – See I kind of like the “Brady Bunch” but that’s where we’re different.
Kelsey: You lost my vote!

AJ: Maybe we could do like the “Partridge Family” with like all of the SFC members in like the bus.

The “Partridge Family” I would like, if you had done that you would have had my vote.