EDITORIAL – Paper-cutter incidents divide SGB, leaders

Election committee hearings over an e-mail and the unauthorized use of a paper cutter delayed… Election committee hearings over an e-mail and the unauthorized use of a paper cutter delayed Student Government Board polling results Wednesday night, kick-starting a new year of strife, divisiveness and name-calling.

The results, which were supposed to be announced at 9:30 p.m., were instead announced after midnight. Black Action Society’s fund-raising chair K. Chase Patterson filed complaints independently, and accused members of the Driven and Proven slates of improperly using a paper cutter — not in a dirty way — to aid in the production of campaign fliers.

SGB election rules prohibit candidates from using SGB supplies. That said, a paper cutter is hardly a copy machine; it is, if anything, a not-so-high-tech version of scissors. Using the paper cutter would not infringe on the rights of others to use it in the way that using a copy machine would take toner and paper from others.

During this time of national crisis over nonrenewable resources — cough, oil at $46 a barrel, cough — we can say assuredly that the paper cutter isn’t going anywhere. Wear and tear on its precious blade might rack up a cost of around 75 cents for the tin foil used to sharpen it. Surely, with all the student activity fee money in its coffers, SGB can afford such an extravagance.

But onto the bigger issue: Did Patterson think that filing these complaints was going to help his case? If anything, starting petty fights on election night just opens SGB up to discord, which leads to inaction and uselessness.

Brian Kelly, newly elected SGB president, didn’t help matters when he called Patterson “some little kid,” despite the fact that Patterson’s actions were childish. Kelly needed to be the bigger man. Instead, he stooped to engage in this petty argument. As a student liaison to the Board of Trustees, he should act better than that.

Kelly also reported that five students alleged that BAS members had told them not to vote for him because he was racist. While BAS didn’t endorse Kelly, and has every right as a governance group to voice its opinion, dragging race into the issue is a low blow. The two strongest candidates of the five that BAS endorsed — Monica Higgins and Dilinus Harris — made the board.

Half of the new SGB members are minorities, and the board is diverse in terms of religion and sexual orientation, making BAS’s accusations reek of extra-sour grapes.

This election cycle, while not nearly as bracing as that other November election, should matter to students. But when the most important issue of the night is a paper cutter, why should anyone care?