DSU are Squits The problem with people in positions of power Brandon Ferguson, Opinions Editor PACINIUE Don’t you love alliteration? I mean, just the way that title speaks with such symphonic splendor; the syllables bounce up and down like chubby cheerleaders at a pep rally and the P’s are harder than after a night drinking cheap draft. The problem with people in positions of power is exactly that—if given a pulpit, they'll abuse it with equal parts arrogance and self-pro- motion. Now, working at a college student newspaper hardly brings with it a position of power. It’s mostly just people you have problems with— like Trevor’s and my serious drinking problem. However, my position provides me with this page upon which I can wax poetic about what- ever weird and preposterous postulations that pique my wonder. Power's as impressive as it is ugly (and at times really hard to under- stand, ya?). Part of the problem with people in positions of power lies in their personality: think strata council on this point. People who want to make decisions that will affect others should normally be commended for their willingness to take part in the meetings, discussions, research, and debate that most of us couldn’t be damned to participate in. Would you skip Monday Night Football, Desperate Housewives, or even Seinfeld reruns and a comfy couch to vote on pressure washing or the strange odor emanating from apartment 4-B? But almost routinely this nobility gives way to an overburdened ego and an underutilized set of morals. People become obsessed with their titles. They become incensed by challenges to their authority. They become the living embodiment of everything that’s wrong with hierarchy—jesters given Burger King crowns who act like they’re Queen of the clowns. Take the current DSU—Douglas College Board beef that’s arisen, for instance. When I first started hanging around the student union, I was astounded to watch a bunch of babies bitch and moan over every- thing that had nothing to do with you, the student body. The whole process seemed inclined to perpetuate petty differences while remain- ing indifferent to the needs of those who elected them to these posi- tions. So with my abundance of cynicism, I figured it was about par for the political course. But what faces us as a student body right now cuts deeper than stereotype and strips away all notions of stigma. This battle over slop- py bookkeeping has implications that go well beyond what can reasonably be called “bickering.” This is your money being mismanaged, and it’s someone’s fault from the past four years. Whether that fault was ignorance or insidious has yet to be determined. Rest assured—it will be exposed. Again, I honestly believe that this is some mon- umental fuck up; an oversight that somehow snow- balled into complete incompetence. However, the only way to prove it is by coming clean and opening the books. Rumours of theft and deception are as inciting as outright denial. So, I ask you to get involved, get informed, and be patient. People in power are as prone to the problems of procedure as much as you or I. ’'m writing this article two days past deadline, for instance. If you’ve read before now, you may recall my rant against the Douglas College Board a couple weeks ago. I admit that that was an inflammatory attempt to outrage some while condemning others. Truth is, the Douglas College Board has every right to act out against the DSU and withhold their funds because the DSU has apparently been run by mon- keys too involved in he-said/she-said bullshit to bother analyzing the books. I was completely igno- rant in chastising the Board; but, I was also entirely too pissed off by their attempts to sway public opinion through email to not fight back. A good friend once said that “Douglas College is just a microcosm of the real world” and that “we're stupid or gutless or both to not expose it as such.” And I finally agtee. The time for ducking heads in sand and tucking tails and running is well passed us. More than a call to action, we need truth. Bureaucracies are the giant pink elephants of the everyday—so in need of two- thirds support to even fart or tie a shoelace that they often don’t notice they’ve crapped their pants until years later when they trip and fall in it. Well, we’re years later and some of us have just arrived to find a heaping pile of shit. Most of you didn’t vote in the last election; a lot of you never even studied here during the last elec- tion and so you had no say in which geeks run the show with your bucks. It’s the same for a lot of people in the college, at the paper, around the halls—yet every inch of Dougie Daycare’s been touched by this diaper rash. Here we are with a problem; a problem that pre- cedes our knowledge of it but whose ultimate reso- lution can come by our hands and with our heads. I don’t know. Maybe I’m talking to nobody out there. Maybe I’m only talking to those on both sides who hate me already. But the hope is that ’m speaking to someone who has their mind made up but wants somebody to say it out loud. Student unions are usually a bunch of people with nowhere to spend their Saturday nights so they spend stu- dents’ money instead; College Boards are often peo- ple who could never win a political election, but like to think they could, and want power nonetheless. Gross generalizations, but where there’s smoke there’s fire. In case I’m fired next week, it’s been good talk- ing with you. Editorial Cartoon by JJ MC Cullough saddam promised quick, SImmLGN IAEA