Monday's Leftist Abuse: Fighting Student Goverment Corruption

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Monday's Leftist Abuse: Fighting Student Goverment Corruption

By Adrienne Royer, on October 20, 2009

Congratulations to Lance Kennedy for taking on student government corruption at the University of Texas. He's the Monday, October 19 winner of the Report a Leftist Abuse contest.

What would you do if your student government was being used by the president of the university to lobby the state legislature for a tuition increase? What if you ran campaign to elect new leaders to the student government and later found out that a secret society was campaigning against you?

Lance Kennedy was faced with this dilemma when he served as the policy director for the Student Government at the University of Texas-Austin. Through his position, he allocated approximately $250,000 in funding to student organizations on campus.

According to Kennedy and the Daily Texan articles, Student Government (SG) had not faced a contested election in a number of years, and the administration was every eager to maintain the type of students who were involved.

After watching SG tell state legislators and the board of regents that students supported tuition increases despite widespread campus outrage, Kennedy grew frustrated. He and a few like-minded students created Texas Revolution as an alternative to SG. Tuition had increased by 91% since 1999, and they wanted to fight future increases.

Within a year, they had the broad support of students and successfully lobbied for the passage of a concealed weapon law on college campuses through the state senate. The measure didn't pass the state house.The issue was taken up again in 2009 but failed.

Last January, Phillip Tau and Sarah Stearn, members of the Texas Revolution, ran against the status quo candidates.

"Someone needed to do something about it," said Kennedy who helped the Tau-Stearn campaign. "There had been no contested elction in 7 years."

After a tight race, they received 20% of the vote.

Following the election, an anonymous source sent the student newspaper an email revealing that an Election Supervisory Co-Chair, the oversight body of the SG election, had contacted members of a secret society called, "The Eyes of Texas," and urged them to campaign for Tau and Stearn's opposition.

The email, which the student newspaper printed, asked members of the society to directly contact student groups and lobby against Tau and Stearn. It was later revealed that the sitting SG president had also sent emails to five fraternities endorsing the opposition as well.

"They had 60% of the vote," Kennedy explained. "They had access to all of the schoool's list-servs. The heads of every student group were contacted by them."

A campus forum was held where nearly 200 students urged the SG to hold another election. The Dean of Students overruled them, and the election results were approved.

While these were not the results that Kennedy, Tau or Stearn were looking for, the controversy woke up the student body and a reform committee was organized.

"A lot of watchers are now watching so this shouldn't happen again," said Kennedy. Now a law student at Notre Dame, he hopes that students at other colleges will use the Texas Revolution model and change their student governments.

If you're frustrated with your student government, contact the Campus Leadership Program at Campus Reform and bring a Campus Election Workshop to your school.

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Keep fighting the good fight Lance! We have some similar problems with SGA at A&M. We now have several YCT members on the senate. We need to return these SGAs back to the hands of the students!! Good work at t.u.!

Justin Pulliam
Oct 20, 9:06 pm

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Why do you consider this a leftist abuse? It is just plain abuse and has nothing to do with being leftist at all. I am glad that the students stood up for what was right and tried to fix a failed system. But labeling it a leftist abuse is just wrong.

laurahubka
Oct 21, 2:44 pm

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I agree with laurahubka.

The Leadership Institute (LI) and, in-turn, CampusReform.org (CR) claims to be "a non-partisan educational organization" (see the bottom of every page on this website). So, if we assume that partisan politics does not motivate LI/CR, what does? In other words, it appears the "rescue mission to save conservative college students trapped behind liberal (welfare) lines" that is so breathlessly and heroically professed by Mr. Hubbard (and presumably urged by LI/CR) is assumed as a predicate for activism and reformation, rather than demonstrated by any even vaguely objective means.

LI/CR's Mission Statement claims, in part, that it is: "designed to provide conservative activists with the resources, networking capabilities, and skills they need to revolutionize the struggle against leftist bias and abuse on college campuses." As an "educational organization," where is LI/CR's own study of its assumed thesis that universities and colleges have as significant, "leftist bias and abuse?" If other studies or research are the basis for LI/CR's mission, shouldn't those studies be scrutinized as to their veracity and be cited and available for everyone to review and comment on?

Simply asserting "leftist bias and abuse" exists on today's campuses, without first doing a competent and rigorous examination of the issue, is (or should be) an insult to the students LI/CR is attempting to recruit. On the other hand, if LI/CR is actually a partisan project simply shilling for one political ideology over another, it should admit it and refrain from calling itself a "non-partisan educational organization."

joemccarthywasright
Oct 21, 5:12 pm

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@laurahubka

Texas Revolution was primarily created by conservative students. While the post featured their fight to have a fair election, they were also working to distribute funding fairly to all student groups. One of the problems that Kennedy faced was the Student Government's tendency to give the LGBT and liberal groups more funding than anyone else.

Adrienne Royer
Oct 21, 5:18 pm

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See admission by the University of Texas of its (implied) plot to assist the fbi in the intended arrest of this Target.

From Harlingen, Texas
November 8, 2009
University Of Texas Health Science Center
2102 Treasure Hills Boulevard
Harlingen, Texas 78550

I believe that the evidence will show that during the past several years the University of Texas (UT) officials (including the Chancellor, legal counsel, chief of police, high ranking officers, an fbi criminal operative/perpetrator, et al, intentionally or knowingly engaged in a criminal conspiracy (and other criminal actions as evidenced by a pattern and practice of such conduct) to violate the civil rights ( under color of law and police authority) of Geral Sosbee (hereinafter referred to as ‘T’).
From the time in 2002, that T was a part time *student and visiting scholar on the campus of the University of Texas, Brownsville, Texas, and continuing to date at UT, Harlingen, Texas, the fbi entered onto the UT campuses and spread rumors that caused the police and the administrators to commence illegal efforts to arrest T. See:

http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part19a-updatefo.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part5-updatefor2.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part8-updatefor2003.html

The Chancellor and legal counsel of UT authorize the unlawful attempted sting operations against T in order to help the fbi silence, or imprison T [ See the above link at part 19a]. Additionally, the UT chief of police and his officers were aware of a criminal assault on the person of T by a contract employee of the UT and they all made no record of same, even as they (Police officials Davidson, Trevino, Earhart, et al) illegally continued to stalk, harass, and threaten T, in an apparent effort to fabricate a basis to arrest him.

The legal counsel at UT, like the fbi and DOJ attorney Sara Robinson pretend to justify the illegal police actions by stating that they are interested in “possible crimes” by the Target; such false argument also intends to obscure in its inflammatory meaning the actual crimes being committed by their clients (the fbi and the police) against T as documented at many pages of http://www.sosbeevfbi.com.

The fbi is widely known for illegally imprisoning, or killing innocent persons and I have proven unlawful imprisonment by the fbi in the Rodriguez case at:
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/rodriguezvritch.html

False imprisonment of innocent people unlawfully serves the interests of the corrupt CJS and at the same time false arrests are used to silence and discredit whistleblowers and others:
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/nocriminalrecord.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/governmentmustcr.html

I have also shown that the statement of so-called ‘core values’ by the fbi are a sham; see:
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/specialupdate.html

For more on the societal and global effects of corrupt and out of control law enforcement officials in the United States of America, see:
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/mentaldwarfs.html
http://roma.indymedia.org/printable/taxonomy/term/1549
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/fbiciade-mystifi.html

The failure of the Congress to stop the atrocities committed by the fbi, cia and their corrupt/cowardly friends in blue across the country (and around the world) embolden the thugs with badges, so that they regularly commit felony offenses against their Targets with total impunity; indeed any Target who attempts to report the atrocities ongoing by the fbi and the law enforcement community are subject to being falsely arrested, or treated as human experimentees . See:
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part16-updatefor.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/tooth14.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/hightechassau.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/non-consensual.html

For more background information on fbi’s need to imprison or kill this Target , see:
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/affidavit2007.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/statement.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/thisiswhy.html

Concerning the present unlawful actions by UT officials, T attempted to communicate as an attorney pro se (inactive ) with both the Chancellor and the legal counsel of UT. Each refused T's efforts to dialogue and the two blocked all e-mail from T.
[The Texas Lawyer's Creed, mandated by the Supreme Court of Texas and the Court of criminal Appeals on November 7, 1989, is thereby violated in part by UT Attorney Chatterjee.
The Creed reads in part: III. Lawyer To Lawyer
“I will be courteous, civil, and prompt in oral and written communications.”]

As of today, the UT officials continue to withhold information in violation of the Open Records (OR) statutes and T plans to publish any forthcoming opinion from the Texas Attorney General (AG) on this subject plus any data released by UT under orders from the AG. T also intends to publish the name of the fbi operative/perpetrator who filed a false police report and who continues efforts to hide his identity with the approval of the UT legal counsel and Chancellor. Note that the Texas State Bar, Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, refuses to process T’s complaint against Attorney Chatterjee.

Over the last two months the UT library staff continue to obey the instructions of their misguided UT President (at San Antonio, Texas) and UT Chancellor as follows:
Each time T enters the library, the library staff are under orders to follow and report on his activities. During the period of time that T did not visit the library, the same officials frantically begin asking the employees of the library whether they had seen T in the library. This preoccupation and obsession by the UT officials signals that their unlawful and despicable and ominous conduct as described herein continue. The UT officials and perpetrators of crimes against T appear as hysterical fiends , not unlike the fbi terrorist identified by this Target at UT, Brownsville, Texas, as the criminal Toni Iommi :
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/thefbistonyiomm.html

Future updates to this report will be made as an addendum to :
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part19-updatefor.html
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part19a-updatefo.html *See ID at bottom of page at: http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/part19a-updatefo.html END

gsosbee
Nov 12, 5:09 pm

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