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Thomas K. Sarrouf, Jr.
Recently, The Heights published a hit-piece on Michael Yurkovskiy, a representative of the Campus Leadership Project, which is an organization that dedicates itself to helping young people get involved in their campus’ student governments. The hit-piece interviewed a number of representatives in UGBC who claim that they were approached by Yurkovskiy in an attempt to help their political aspirations within UGBC. The article’s main point, besides casting Yurkovskiy’s attempts in a negative light—and this was echoed over and over by basically every comment offered by UGBC representatives and candidates—was that partisan politics should not enter into campus politics. There are a number of problems with this whole scenario, and the fact that it is even news is absurd. For one thing, Campus Leadership Project actually agrees with that sentiment. How do I know that? I attended their Leadership Conference this past December, where they summoned hundreds of students, yes, mostly conservative, for a three-day seminar of presentations encouraging us to get involved in student government, and giving us the tools and strategies for effective campaigning, giving speeches, participating in debates, building up a ground game, forming coalitions, marketing, and getting out the votes. One of the key things that CLP emphasized was to avoid straying into partisan politics and instead focus on issues that mattered to our particular campuses. And what were those things mentioned as issues we could focus on campus? It’s a conservative organization, so it must be pretty regressive, scary stuff that’s harmful to people. Policies like increasing mental health awareness and resources on campus. Improving campus safety with blue light systems. Working on making sure that fraternities are represented, as they are often blamed by administrators for everything and have their concerns ignored (something irrelevant for our campus, but many of the other schools have fraternities, and they deserve to have their voices heard). Increasing protections and resources for survivors of sexual assault. Mind you, these are many of the same policies that are part of stump speeches of every member of BC’s own student assembly! The CLP’s Leadership Conference focused on helping people organize their campaigns and focus on strategic things that make winning an election necessary. We barely talked about issues at all; the above ones were just suggestions. They mostly asked us to identify problems at our specific campuses and build a platform off of that. So what’s the big deal? Why do UGBC people care about some random guy from some random organization trying to “influence campus politics”? Why does The Heights think that this is newsworthy enough to run a long hit piece on a good young man, and someone I consider a friend (which is why I am bothering to write this rebuttal)? For one thing, the UGBC representatives who commented didn’t do their homework. They looked up the Campus Leadership Project, saw TurningPointUSA, and then decided that they were toxic and had to be avoided. All that stuff about Yurkovskiy’s outreach being “suspect and creepy” in the article is stupid posturing. As one friend said, “the pearl-clutching in the article is hilarious.” It drips with ignorance, posturing, and reputation destruction. They also didn’t know that CLP is focusing on building their own branding and pivoting towards the center of American partisan politics, and are thus breaking away from their affiliation with TurningPointUSA because of its partisan agenda. Again, not doing their homework. But something else was revealed in the very stupid Heights article. As all of the UGBC candidates and representatives were claiming that “partisan politics has no place in our campus politics,” they were so fixated on the Turning Point right-wing agenda. Nearly all of the comments focused on the fact that CLP has historically had ties to Turning Point and “what they represent.” Concerns about “outside groups trying to influence the school’s campaigns” are thus revealed to be worried about which ideas count. Anyone with eyes can clearly see how the UGBC elections are characterized by who can virtue signal to the Woke Left the hardest; anyone who expressed any trepidation about creating an LGBTQ+ resource center given the school’s Catholic identity would be run off the debate stage by the other candidates, and wouldn’t have a shot at being elected. Campus politics is no less tinged with partisan politics than anything else. Julia Spagnola’s comments on the matter are so rich with irony in this regard: “The issue isn’t so much Turning Point’s agenda…I think it’s the fact that a political agenda of any kind is making its way into student government.” Right, because UGBC is very neutral on partisan political agendas. The real issue here is that, to UGBC representatives, the so-called CLP agenda represents a more active conservative constituency within UGBC, like what Christian Guma represented last year. The same Christian Guma who was impeached for being conservative and threatening UGBC’s sclerotic status quo. For the standard member of the Student Assembly of UGBC, this is a threat to the hegemony of the liberal ethos of the organization. For The Heights and all of the attendant left-wing partisans that make up their writing staff, CLP involvement in school politics, with all of their highly partisan policies, is an affront to the current state of the campus culture: entitled progressive yuppies moaning about how horrible things are for everyone. It says so much about who is in charge of UGBC. To them, their left-wing beliefs, which are very partisan and could only exist in a progressive echo-chamber of the most elite, “educated” campuses, are not partisan at all, but simply what’s true and good. Anything else, even stuff that is actually non-partisan, such as mental health resources and campus safety, is part of a right-wing conspiracy to infiltrate politics. They don’t know anything about the person they are defaming, the organization he works for, and they don’t seem to recognize that their beliefs are partisan, or that partisan politics will always be in student government. Ultimately, what it comes down to is a partisan organization using the language of neutrality to do the bidding of maintaining their partisan stranglehold on UGBC. In the process, they defamed a good guy who is trying to empower students across the country to run for student government and make their campuses a better place by slandering him as a deceitful, partisan creep. Given that it’s The Heights, I’m not surprised; they’re hardly the pinnacle of journalistic integrity. But they should apologize and retract their bogus article forthwith. And this goes without saying, but honestly, we should abolish UGBC and reap the benefits of one less left-wing organization that dominates our campus; the people in charge clearly don’t know anything, and glaringly lack self-awareness about the most rudimentary facets of partisan politics. Why would we entrust them with any responsibility at all? |