I'm Back

So I would first like to apologize for my extended time off, I caught up on a lot of rest and relaxation and I'm now back at school. So in honor of that I present to you a gift the first draft of an article I wrote for my college's newspaper. I hope you enjoy it

No Beg Your Pardon.
By M. Miley

Now this is not just meant to be a counter-response to Washeika’s response to my What The Hell Is Wrong With CSI, piece. But I will cover some of those, with more than a helping of ad hominem comments. But I will also attempt to update and respond to some feedback I have received from the previous piece as well as the open letter to Student Government that can be read in the newest issue of the Third Rail, Fall 09, but more on this later.

So first in a general response to her piece, I wish that Washeika’s mind were as deep as her stomach, for after reading it several times I’m not exactly sure what the hell she is talking about. If this is a product of a… “Proud English major” well I’m not sure if that says much towards are good English Department. Now on to specifics, you said that “I do believe that attacking the student government that you (i.e. me, Michael Miley) strived so hard to join was a bit crude”. No, no it’s not crude, I sought to change things from the inside, that route was closed to me. Shame on me for doing that because I should have remembered that real change can only come from without, not from within. But do you know what is crude? Coming into the Third Rail office shouting about this is what victory looks like while flipping on and off out lights and bragging about winning by TWO VOTES. Now you can keep on going and telling everyone it’s a lie and that you came to our office to shake Neil’s hand and congratulating all of us who didn’t win. But to quote some asshole in Congress “You lie”! Because well Neil (Third Rail’s very talented layout director) wasn’t even in the office, oh and there are six fucking people who were there that will swear on a stack of bibles you did that, so please stop lying to everyone. Oh and just one more thing, I think it was a bit crude of you and the former SG President Peter, and lying to members of the slate to get them to quit, which is a bit crude.

My next complaint about your near incomprehensible article and I quote “ It seems that when looking at the facts your figures seem to be understated, over exaggerated”. Now to quote a very famous movie “What we have here, is failure to communicate”, because well your sentence makes absolutely no logical sense for one very simple reason, something cannot both be an understatement and an exaggeration. I repeat, something just cannot be both understated and exaggerated at the same time. And if my figures are completely wrong as you say they are, well prove it. You see the burden of proof is upon you to show that my numbers were wrong, since that is the claim you are making.

This next bit I found interesting and I quote it in full.

“The allocation for the general Student Government scholarship fund is $20,000. Now while this may not seem like a lot, please be aware that the commissions of Student Government also give scholarships. The Academic and Curricular Affairs Commission gives at least $12,500 in scholarships a year. $10,500 of this allocation is given to a different major every month for seven months. I am sorry you were not able to receive those because you are a student working towards a degree”.

To start $20,000 doesn’t sound like a lot because, well it isn’t. That’s a scholarship for about ten students more or (actually) less. How many commissions give out scholarships and how much are they? Your next point I have to chock up to a typo on your part since if the ACA Commission gives $12,500 a year how can they give $10,500 to a different academic department a month for seven months when 10,500 only goes into 12,500 once? Now just al little personal information, I live a very comfortable middle class (I’m among the last of the middle class in this country) life style, my father pays my school bill, since if were going to split hairs, he’s the middle class one, since the pay check I take home barley covers my cost of living but that is an aside, what I care about are the students who are not, or have not been as fortunate as I have been. Lastly, Christ on Fire! What the hell do you mean “Not able to receive those because you are a student working towards a degree?” What the hell does that mean, everyone where is working towards a degree of some kind, the only thing that makes sense to me, is that the many scholarships you just mentioned (barley) are for Graduate Students (which would be redundant since you talking about scholarships just for them further down in your article. Now if we go with my surmise that since I’m not eligible for them since I’m working on my undergrad degree, than they must be for Grad students and well what are the scholarships for the Undergrads since I feel, I may be incorrect in this, that undergrad students are more numerous than Grad students. Now you go on to say that “Most of the scholarships that are given out are to the sum of 500 to 1,500 dollars”, to that I say once again how many? How many people have received these scholarships? How many students has this helped? If you have the money figures, I’m sure that you can find out how many of us, your constituents you have actually helped.

Now you go on to talk about how Student Government has a “Winter Wonderland Dance” which is all nice and good that we can have fun, I’m not advocating some ascetic lifestyle for all of us, but once again would it kill us to get more speakers here to talk about the things impacting out life, to get the discourse going on this campus about healthcare, banking reform, jobs, the nation as a whole, problems facing the college, Staten Island, the city and State of New York things that should be done. I will tell you one of the best events that go on is “The World On Wednesday” when they have Ambassador Robert W. Dry come and speak, those are my favorite “World on Wednesdays” and I’m sure more of us would enjoy debating ideas and learning more about subjects we are interested in. Considering that Student Government had one, just one, just one single rally against the tuition hike we had and you called it a day. I don’t care if 2 people were at the first one you should have been out side of 1C everyday, outside of Morales office and 1A rallying the students and trying to connect with the other CUNY Student Governments to try and fight back. If none of them had reached out to you, you should have reached out to them and been LEADERS! Student Government should have been at the forefront of a call to the barricades to fight the hike, and with CUNY and SUNY “reform” coming at us with a projected ten percent tuition hike coming at us, I expect you to do more.

Oh and just because I was not physically in the room at the time doesn’t mean I don’t have ways of finding out what went on in there during your SG meetings and what was said by people, and things that were left out of your minutes. You also say that most of the work you do is for the betterment of the students, but I ask again, what are those things? What are you doing exactly to help the students? To harp back on the idea of stipends, they are there to reward you for doing work, which as far as me and a majority of the campus goes; we don’t know what the hell you are doing for us. But beyond that in this time of economic crisis when people are faced with pay cuts and unemployment, when my job cuts out hours following a pay cut several years ago with the excuse of the economy is bad, why do we have to suffer alone. That does not just go for Student Government, that goes for the Administration as well, how come President Morales god a pay raise when our tuition was hiked (for more information on that please read the last few issues of Third Rail).

Now I have just one more thing to say about your article before I touch on some other things. You say “The other issues you bring up are not the issues that Student Government can fix with its allocation. The problems you have with Buildings and Grounds should be addressed with Buildings and Grounds.” Wrong, you fail governance forever! Good God Almighty do you even understand what you’re suppose to do! You (and the rest of Student Government) are our elected representatives, OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES! You are to represent US, the Students and our problems, to lobby for our interest, don’t tell me there’s nothing you can do, it may be vain, since the bureaucracy at CSI puts the old Soviet bureaucracy to shame, to call CSIs bureaucracy Byzantine would be an insult to the Byzantine Empire but there has to be something you can do. So I understand the hardships, I do, of all the paper work, of waiting for one’s turn to come up so that something can finally be done. But when we have publications that are paralyzed because of a tech problem and they have to wait days and days, even weeks, months and I would not be surprised years for the Office of Information Technology (OIT) to come and do something, let alone the awful conditions that are professors are forced to labour under. So I refuse to believe there is nothing you can do to take steps to fix this, because if you can’t and Student Government can’t help with many of the problems on this campus, than what the hell is the purpose of even having it?

But now I quickly turn to other things quickly. As I mentioned earlier in the article the new Third Rail for fall 2009 is an issue we should all read and here I would like to confront some comments I have received on it so far among what some have described to be as its impact. Now first there is a claim that Student Government last year spent over $50,000 on them selves, many of the senators have protested this claiming that it is physically impossible. But when Neil Schuldiner made this same claim in front of Student Government some months ago and was meet by the same protests from Student Government, he went down a list of expenditures proving it. So please everyone keep your eyes peeled for more information on this, here in the Banner, over in Third Rail and many other places since I look forward to reproducing it as soon as possible. A sad note I would like to mention is that Washeika Torres is now our Student Government Vice-President, this to me is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard in the long sad history of bad ideas, if the several incidents that I have pointed out aren’t proof of that I do not know what is, and I would like to congratulate Nicholas Imbornone in being elected President, he’s a good man, and he means good, just remember Nick, hold your ground, SG has compromised enough. In that spirit I would also like to congratulate Student Government for starting to turn in the right direction, in what I can only see as a sign of solidarity they voted on a cut to their stipends. Even more hopeful is that in their first meeting which took place on January 28th, there came a motion to pay for a hotel room for the College’s Vice President which cost about $180, now although some members of Student Government were for this (when I get my hands on a copy of the minutes than we will all know who) many were not, and in one statement said “Is this really what the Student Activity Fee money should be going to?” I can say with great pride that this motion was voted down and our money, our Student money, meant to be spent on the Students, the real power on this campus, was not spent on an administrator. So good show SG, and good job I look forward to hearing more stories like this, and trust me I will be looking.

I would like to end on one final note. For too long many of the publications were in disarray. Fallout from the “Pub War”, coups, counter-coups, revolts and restructuring had scattered many of us to the wind, and for too long the administration and SG has enjoyed a free ride, but now we are rebuilding, reforming and stable and the period of chaos is now over, and we’re back.