Against my better judgment, I still read what you write sometimes. Sometimes you write on my blog comment section, sometimes you write on the VisLupes comment section, sometimes you write on the Sagebrush. You know all this. You have a lot to comment on. A lot to say, really — important stuff, you think, stuff that needs to be said, why else would you say it? I make this tacit assumption each time I read your stuff, in fact I make it anytime I read anything: you feel you have something that the world needs to know. And so I read your stuff, knowing there’s a chase, wondering how I can cut to it.

Just a little bit ago you posted what you hoped would be your “last comment on any of these blogs” in response to one of the VislOops filing some judicial thingy, claiming that though you often agree in principle with what critics of ASUN have to say, you absolutely oppose them in practice. This is a shame because as you have spilled thousands and thousands of words onto the internet at folks like me and have had tens of thousands of words thrown right back at you (also by folks like me), it seems that you managed to not have taken anything away with you.

I guess this’ll have to be my last shot to convince you why much of what you believe is misguided — if not downright incorrect much of the time — and hopefully, hopefully, save you from having to get another one of these furious letters. Let’s not waste anymore time being cordial and get right down to the problem with your worldview.

To best understand the whole situation it is perhaps worthwhile to stress exactly what is going wrong with your thoughts. As I’ve commented on in the past, it is that you manage to always go tangent to the point being made, you have a terrible tendency to not address the subject at hand. I would like to be clear here: the problem — the reason for this letter — is that it is evident that you do not care even a little bit about how people espouse opinions. The problem is that you think it is okay to believe something in the face of evidence to the contrary. You ascribe, whether you think you do or not, to a form of confirmation bias wherein you do not take differing opinions seriously, to the point of being deaf to them entirely. Now, should you feel so inclined to respond to this letter, I urge you to respond to that thesis statement, as all that follows is simply evidence in favor of that proposition.

For instance, here, in beautiful, unadorned language is your obliviousness distilled into a single sentence, the context of which is you commenting upon the actions of people like UNR SFL and the VisLupes: “if you’re ultimate goal was to prove that the advisors are not doing their job and ensuring that ASUN is responsible and accountable for their actions, which I’ve sensed is your goal, then I couldn’t agree more.” If you don’t see anything wrong with this at all then perhaps this will help. Follow the logic.

1.) “If you’re ultimate goal was to prove that”

Improper contraction use aside, why would you assume this is our ultimate goal? Have I not made it abundantly clear that the abolishment of ASUN is my goal, that returning the mandatory fees to students the step after that? What makes you think that even that piddly goal is what could even come close to being an “ultimate” goal? How about abolish the real government? How about instituting free and open markets? Heck, getting Taco Bell ranks higher on my List of Ultimate Goals than does getting rid of your sad, sorry institution. You have to realize, dear Gracie, that the world doesn’t care about the ASUN. In fact, it appears that only about, what, 15% of the students of this university even mildly care. Due to the high proportion of those that don’t care about the ASUN (consider that Kenyans, the French, the Dallas Cowboys, etc, do not give one single damn about it), it is safe to say that NO ONE CARES about the ASUN. Not even me, dear reader.

2.) “the advisors are not doing their job”

No, Gracie. No no no no. You poor girl. We aren’t mad at “advisors.” We aren’t up in arms about bureaucrats when we’re insulting you. We are insulting YOU, Gracie. YOU and the SENATE. The advisors are bureaucratic hacks who follow bureaucratic principles. Yes, this is bad. Yes, they have no incentive to better the institution around them. Yes, they are partly responsible for what goes on in ASUN. BUT NO, NO, NO, Gracie, we are mad at YOU. You, as a person who claims to represent student interests. You, as the leader of the the student senate. You, as a person who received 7,000 unjustified clams of student funds. You, as a person who supports ASUN’s fees and programs and ideas and principles. You, Gracie, are what we are mad at. You who would pretend that it is not YOUR job to ensure ASUN is responsible, who would pretend it is not YOUR job to ensure ASUN is accountable, who would pretend that the ASUN can be anything but an inherently flawed system that only benefits and whose only input is to and from a small minority of students.

3.) “and ensuring that ASUN is responsible and accountable for their actions,”

Your ability to pass The Buck and Spread the Blame is astounding. Having followed what you’ve had to say for these past years, it never ceases to amaze me how you can think of yourself as so very innocent and free of sin. I believe I once remarked that “you play yourself as an unknowing victim.” It boggles my mind — being a believer in personal responsibility as I am — that you can think you are blameless. Utterly and entirely blameless. You may be the only person I know who manages to overwhelm with your declarations of underachievement. But, Gracie, when you convey a point in an open area of discourse, there are those that will disagree with you. This applies to the actions of which you partake as well: by participating in and supporting the functions of the ASUN, you are declaring a position which many, including myself, find wrong. The ASUN is a sorry excuse for an institution, especially one that claims to be the voice of students and to be doing so much good for them. Now, I’ve made the case elsewhere that this is wrong. Since it is wrong, you are wrong to support it. You can’t just take praise for the good stuff and say the bad stuff is due to Not-Me-A, Not-Me-B, and so forth. Hence, when I say something like “Gracie is wrong,” it isn’t a personal attack, it’s a claim about the world, namely that, You support a system which should not be supported.

4. “which I’ve sensed is your goal, then I couldn’t agree more.”

This conclusion falls so short of the truth that it is practically not worth bothering with. If A, B, C, then I couldn’t agree more. But no one posited A, B, or C. If unicorns are hollow, and if hollow things are filled with helium, and if things with helium float, then I agree that unicorns can float. But, sorry to break it to you, unicorns can’t float. Gracie, your internal logic may be consistent, maybe even tip-top, but how it applies to the external world is anyone’s guess. I hope you’ve gotten the point of all of this: what you believe must correspond to the reality of the world around us. Since what you believe currently does not do this, you are wrong on many many important accounts.

And that’s just the first sentence!

Now, I could bog you down with refuting the silly assertion that you believe how something is said makes any difference as to the truth or falsity of a position, but I think that maybe I would be making a straw-woman of you. Your only critique of the UNR Students for Liberty is that when we say something, we tend to yell it, and no one likes yelling, and no one wants to work with someone who is yelling, and aren’t they all just a bunch of meany-heads? Your critique of our position is that we are “assholes” and your biggest complaint about our methods is that they aren’t “diplomatic.” But this is just pathetic nonsense. Who cares about any of that stuff, indeed as I asked of you last time, qui gives a shit?

I don’t think you actually care about how mean we are as much as you feign to. No. I give you more credit than that. What I think you have a problem with is that you sense, however dimly, that we are right. That these assholes, these jerks, these douchebags may have something behind them in the way of reasoning and evidence and that maybe, just maybe, they are right when they criticize your opinion. After all, what exactly is incorrect about believing that people shouldn’t be forced to do things they don’t want to do? What is incorrect about believing that people shouldn’t be governed by those in an institution that is unsupported by the vast majority? What is incorrect in thinking that political opinions to the contrary are wrong?

Gracie, the UNR Students for Liberty are a silly bunch. They couch cogent philosophical points within immature Dear Gracie posts, they make political economy points by renting ponies! You can dismiss us as children, but it’s akin to being the Santa at Macy’s getting mad at the child who pulls off his beard and says “Look, he’s not Santa!” You were the Santa of the ASUN and we childishly ripped off your beard. But in getting mad at us you’re forgetting one important fact [Spoiler warning]: THERE IS NO SANTA.

Your frustration with us stems from the fact that you keep missing the point, Gracie. It’s not that we want to show that you, personally, are not Santa, but rather to show that there is no Santa, that the ASUN is not the North Pole and that it never can be. There is nothing wrong with there being no Santa, no North Pole. What is wrong is to continue to pretend that there is even in the face of evidence to the contrary. What is wrong is thinking that it is okay to believe something on insufficient evidence.

Love always,
Barry

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | 21 comments

Obviously, rather than come to our side of the issue of ASUN (that it is hopelessly inefficient and impossible to regulate with anything that could be called responsibility), they urge their senators or some election guy or somebody (aren’t all these bloggers graduated?) to sign three pieces of paper or something and it gets thrown on the books. Easy peasy. (I’m not going to lie to you right now, either, I couldn’t be bothered to actually read what they’re complaining about, it’s just an easy way to get traffic if we tag them…)

Sign three pieces of paper and something becomes law. Hasn’t happened for three years. Is this how you believe you can reform a government? Is this how feel democracy is supposed to work? Thus I pose to the Visl-Pays, either 1) Stop caring (seriously, aren’t you all graduated?) 2) Start hating. If there’s one thing to like about the ASUN, there’s at least twenty things to hate…and you’re little legislation pending after three years is a fine example.

Or — and this is what I suppose you’ll do — completely disregard this argument, spew something about trying to “fix” something, mention the judicial council, site some law no one cares about, possibly refer to the founders, argue semantics over content, and refer to my obviously simplistic point as too radical to take serious.

Maybe after another three years, you’ll come around.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | 2 comments

An Argument Against ASUN

I would invite other club leaders to respond to this as well, but allow me to answer these questions based upon my experience (worked for asun, ran for election, club leader my entire time). Before starting the list, you mentioned that the ASUN may have affected students in a way that they do not immediately notice, such as campus escort or free food. The problem with this argument is that those services you provide cannot be provided to every single student, so that means there are certain people getting screwed (the apathetic – super majority) and others who are benefiting (us – elite few). This is wrong, very, very wrong. Okay, let’s begin:

1) This question falsely assumes student input is already in the process of how ASUN spends money. Last I checked, the ASUN itself is powerless in the allocation of nearly 50% of its funds as it is being gobbled up by the staffers. This is wrong.

2) Profits? The 5% profit that ASUN is skimming off the top of every textbook? Well I hope that would be eliminated and provided at cost.

3) Why should such organizations/activities endure if people are unwilling to pay for them? It is similar to asking “What if the hole diggers and the hole fillers were eliminated?” – Nobody wanted them in the first place. Which leads into number…

4) Nobody wants them. (and by nobody, i mean the other 90% that don’t vote/dont even know what ASUN is. Those are the people are who are really being screwed).

5) I did not realize student organizations needed to be managed. If by managed you mean completely disenfranchised by bureaucracy, then I suppose this claim has legitamacy. Otherwise, human beings will still organize and rally themselves just as we have done since the stone age. The only difference is that clubs that cannot survive without club funding will be eliminated while the good clubs who have enough synergy will endure and be just as strong. People who think clubs would just disappear if ASUN did are generally only ASUN hacks.

6) Again, you are assuming the ASUN is the voice. On average, the ASUN has about a 10% voter turnout. The ASUN senate, as mentioned in a previous post, is dominated by a certain group of people.

7) a. You assume campus programming is wanted. You assume people want the stupid flipside events.
b. What people have really failed to realize thus far is that our event is NO DIFFERENT than any flipside event, we just threw together a video of it actually happening. Thats the true kicker.

By illustrating our waste, we are illustrating the waste of the activities board of ASUN as a whole, and, as we have seen, people are pissed off. So much in fact, that they want it abolished.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | 7 comments

An Argument in Favor of ASUN

I suppose I would be lumped into the stupid category. The funding policies are based largely on trust; the trust that the club leaders on our campus will make responsible choices and not waste funds on events that aren’t meaningful. Perhaps a better word to describe me is naïve. I genuinely believe that most club leaders on this campus believe in what they’re doing and think that they are putting the money to a good cause. And to tell you the truth, I would rather be naïve and end up disappointed than think that every club leader on campus is too dishonest to be trusted with funding. However, as usual, I could be wrong.
I wouldn’t really describe myself as pissed off either. I believe firmly that a government is meant to serve its constituents. If the campus wants to burn ASUN to the ground then so be it. Who am I to stand in the way the will of the people? However, I think many of you who may be roused by a few people screaming on a soapbox should take the time to ask yourself, “Has ASUN touched my college experience?” If you’ve ever picked up a Sagebrush, gotten a ride from campus escort, had one day where you didn’t have to buy lunch because Flipside provided it for you, the answer to that question is yes.
It seems that a majority of your arguments apply to only one section of the ASUN and less than 10% of the overall budget-Clubs and Organizations. It would seem wise to discredit everything that ASUN does if you wish to abolish the whole institution. A few points to consider:
1. Where will all of the money go? The fee is a university student activities fee that is given to the ASUN. I find it highly unlikely, especially considering the current economic situation that this money will simply be given back to the students. More likely is that the university will simply reallocate the money and spend it on activities that they deem are appropriate, entirely removing student input.
2. Where will the profits from the ASUN Bookstore go?
3. What will happen to all of the services that we provide: campus escort, wolf pack radio, nevada sagebrush, brushfire, inkblot etc.
4. What will happen to the 100 student employees that are currently paid by ASUN?
5. Who will take over managing student organizations? The university does not have the resources it needs to effectively manage over 100 organizations. We have professional full-time staff to deal with clubs and organizations; the university does not have the resources to hire someone to fill this position. Will we simple get rid of university recognized organizations, except for fraternities, sororities and club sports, which the university already handles to some degree?
6. Who will be the voice of the student body? Will Chancellor Klaich be expected to hold a town hall meeting on campus and simply hope that enough people will show up and are informed enough to make meaningful comments?
7. Who will pick up the slack in terms of campus programming? Most of the events on campus that are held free of charge to students are put on by Flipside productions: will we simply have no movie series, limited campus speakers, no coffee and a concert series, no howl at the moon, no Friday festival, no welcome back week, no homecoming, and no reason to come to school except for classes?

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | One comment

Regardless, this blog post isn’t meant to defend our position. There really isn’t much I need to say that hasn’t been said already. We know where we stand and why we do. Mostly this blog post is to point out that, no matter how much people may disagree with what we are doing, at least we are doing something. Believing in a cause one thing–acting on it is quite another.

From the comments on a variety of different venues (Facebook, The Nevada Sagebrush, email, our own site), I’ve come to the conclusion that most people don’t understand what we’re trying to do. After all, we are just a bunch of “self-glorifying dumbasses” (damn, you pinned us spot on, you anonymous Sagebrush commenter, you). Clearly we haven’t thought any of this through…

But we have. If we hadn’t, this festival and this petition wouldn’t even be happening. If we didn’t think about these things, we’d be sitting back and doing nothing. We’d be the students who bitched and moaned and expected problems to fix themselves. Well guess what? Problems don’t fix themselves. We’ve done everything from suggest changes to the club commission to try to get into office. Neither of these tactics was effective. So what’s left?

When something is broken and you can’t fix it, maybe you’d be best served to just throw it away and start fresh.

On that note, The Nevada Sagebrush has been kind enough to feature us again, this time not for the festival, but for the petition. You can read it here.

Cheers!

© Mary Hunton for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | 4 comments

Clearly, we over here at the UNR Students for Liberty would be fine even with actual racist comedy as we feel the freedom of expression is more important than upholding tired notions of racial identity, but it seems that this is not the case. And though we rarely find anything within the Nevada Sagebrush comments section that is worth the neurons we waste on it, this particular response, which we quote at length, is absolutely wonderful. Go Brandon Ford:

“I like the fact that I was interviewed and nothing I said seemed to matter. I am a African American male at the University of Nevada, Reno and was in the audience when this sketch was performed. In no way was that racism. It was just a sketch highlighting Barack Obama and the things he has done over his first year in office. Because brown makeup is used, it is automatically racism. In that entire sketch or show, were they trying to single out a race or anyone. It is comedy, deal with it. Saturday Night Live does the same thing and we laugh and tune in the next week. A amateur troupe does the same thing and now they are racist. Seriously??? When a clown puts on white makeup, is he not entertaining people? When people are dressing up like women and over sized women is that not the same thing? People are creating racism and a problem now exists because something so small has to get blown up for no reason. As a black man, I did not feel threatened nor did I feel like these comedic actors were attacking my race. I am a proud person but I know the difference between racism and comedy. Now, we have three performers who happened to be white on the chop block because they did what they like to do: MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH!!!! If I did a Bill Clinton impression I will try to make my skin paler and hair grayer and whiter. I can’t sell my performance without looking it. Because it was a white performer who portrayed Obama, who wanted his performance to seem as realistic as possible, put makeup on his face not to defame him but to merely be like him. He even sounded like our president which was quite impressive. I am from a state and town that is predominately black and I know for a fact those same people I call friends would sit with me and laugh too because: IT’S FUNNY!!!! As a adolescent I had experienced racism that was real and for real, and never on that Saturday afternoon in the theater in the JCSU did I once think that those three performers were racist of any kind. During that sketch or any sketch they did, it never once crossed my mind that these actors were racist or trying to send the wrong message. They were looking for one thing and that was to: MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH!!!! And they got what they wanted. I am proud to call those of who you accused my good-good friends here at University of Nevada, Reno and never would once think that they meant any of this nonsense taking place as I speak. There is a reason why racism and its undertone still exists, and this the reason why. Thanks for free speech on campus UNR, we greatly appreciate it!”

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
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Hey ASUN… are you still wondering why students don’t get involved?  (Click on the image for a PDF version)

© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | 2 comments

For those who also don’t know, they also graced us with a nomination for Student Group of the Year for their upcoming international conference.

Not only that, but they gave our recent antics with the ASUN national exposure.

For that we thank them and can only hope that in reforming our student government, they can teach others how to reform theirs.

Our government is not special nor unique in its misappropriation of illegitimate student funds. We can criticize them and meet with them and work with them and spout sound economic principles until we are blue in the face. …sometimes people just need a wet fish to the face to shock them out of their complacency. We hope our efforts might, in some small part, play a roll in the larger hope of reforming not only student government spending, but all government spending.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | One comment

Diagnosis Part I. The Problem.

What is that thing called where one points out one’s faults in another person? It’s taught in Psych 101 classes. Oh what’s it called? From Wikipedia: Psychological projection [...] is the unconscious act of denial of a person’s own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have the same feelings or motives, rather than what they really think. Yeah, that’s what you’ve got. Not being a psychologist (and the first to admit it!), I would say my diagnosis of you is rudimentary at best, but one does not need to be an otorhinolaryngologist to see the nose right in front of you.

Diagnosis Part II. The Signs.

1. You posted a 450+ word response less than one hour after the original 1000+ word letter was written. I guess my suggestion to “Please spend more time thinking about your responses than typing them. Gut reactions are not befitting you.” was taken with the seriousness I expected it to be.

2. You either knowingly misrepresented my position or failed to grasp it to begin with. I didn’t say there is “only” right and wrong in the world. Rather I said that right and wrong exist (knowing full-well that there are innumerable issues which do not fall into this dichotomy: there exists, after all, shades of grey)…which is a rather innocuous statement of reality if you think about it. (For instance, there either is a moon or there isn’t one.)

3. You kept harping on a point that is pointless to this discussion: it doesn’t matter if the VisLupiKids got their racial facts wrong about the U Commy. I. Do. Not. Care. I am not defending the VisLupes, nor their position, that has nothing to do with my letter. In it I claimed that you constantly dodge issues (“How To Miss The Point”) which your response is yet another example of and that your position with respect to “diversity” is misguided.

4. You constructed me as a straw man and said I am “not open to new ideas and dialogue.” And what evidence do you have to support this opinion? If you were too busy lacing your good points (cultural diversity brings about a greater understanding of humanity in general) with meandering B.S. (seriously a whole paragraph, rehashing what your original comment said?) then it’d be much easier to engage in important issues seriously with you. But instead watch how easy it is to make your claim: You, Gracie, are not open to new ideas and dialogue, and that offends me.

5. You claim that you ‘don’t close [your] mind and think [you're] the “right” and everything else is the “wrong” ‘. Well no one but a fool would agree with that statement. You do, in fact, think you are right. Everyone does. Anyone who doesn’t think their opinion is right and act on that assumption simply doesn’t. And no one thinks “everything else is wrong in society.” That’s just asinine.

6. You then say that I am doing the same offensive thing as you are. Though apparently my way of “classifying” doesn’t seem to rely on the bigoted notion of skin color and instead relies on the merit of opinions and ideas… Even if this were true, you’re just making me sound better here, and you sound worse. Though now that you mention it, what exactly is wrong on judging people’s opinions based on the merit of their propositions?

7. You end by brushing over your errors and “admitting” to them while simultaneously insinuating that I cannot. Having obviously never attended a SFL meeting where I often discover my position to be wrong, I’d say you’re just swatting at a straw man again. But whatever, get your rocks off in the comment section of UNR-based websites you callow little thing.

The Diagnosis Part III. The Symptoms.

You are a bad defender of your poor positions. You lack any insight into anything that I would be interested in. You make meaningless claims on meaningless subjects. You have a knack for hollowing words of their significances and leaving them as so much dead pixels splayed across a screen. When you do manage to infuse some kind of point into your speeches, it is rarely a point you would be proud to make (such as being seen as racist, when, in all likelihood, you are not). You project all of your own arguments’ flaws onto your opponent. You defend positions no one criticizes and completely glean over those which others have problems with. You are good at what you do, problem is that what you do is bad.

The Diagnosis Part IV. The Solution?

Once again, I’m not a doctor. I have no valid medical opinion. I have very few valid opinions. In fact, all of the evidence I have presented is open to interpretation. But as I see it, you have no idea what I am driving at nor any idea how you should feel about it. Rather than careful consideration to pertinent arguments, you’d rather spam the internet with your dribble babble NonSpeak like an internet troll gone bureacratically berserk with power.

To remedy this I suggest you either a) pull your head out of your ass in order to better see, hear, and understand the world or b) leave issues you know little about alone, perhaps to revisit at another time when you are more knowledgeable about the topic.

As a side note, if you’re “actually really interested in” my opinion about race, think briefly about how ass-backward the statement “Some people are proud of their heritage” really is… Don’t see anything wrong with it? Well, consider that “Some people” doesn’t just mean Mexicans at a fiesta or Japanese people drinking tea on their floors or Indians doing a rain dance, it also means neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers, and Muslim terrorists. There is nothing to be “proud” of based on your skin color or your religion or your gender or your social, political, or economic upbringing. It’s luck of the draw: just because someone thinks they were born with a royal flush doesn’t mean they aren’t just a royal pain in the ass.

Finally, consider the simple example my dad related to me: what about a blind man who can’t see any of this “diversity.” What then? There are no “black” or “brown” or “white” people to him. Is he supposed to feel for the crosses and stars of David and ankh’s on people’s necklaces to determine their religion? Must he grope for breasts to determine gender?

Put yourself in his place for a day, Gracie. Try to feel how much better the world is when you stop trying to categorize others and realize we’re all just hurtling around this big ol’ universe on a tiny rock. We’re not men, we’re not women, we’re not white nor black nor brown, we’re not Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, we’re not vegetarians and meat-eaters, not gay or straight, not the differences that divide us. We’re just people.

We’re 99+% of the same genetic stuff. It’s time we start acting that way.

I mean it this time,
Barry Belmont

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2010.
Permalink | 2 comments