Well, if not do, and in the meantime, I'll sum it up: 'Don't take Tim's campaign or his victory seriously now and you're stupid if you ever did.'
It seems as though all of his supporters fell victim to popular rhetoric and empty promises. Let's face it, our new student body president is not going to be able to solve sexual assault and diversity issues on campus. In fact, he hardly presents coherent plans for any of the problems that he identifies. To those of you who voted for him based on the hope that he would make our school a much more tolerant place, I am sorry you were so thoroughly deceived.This type of argument is the most insidious form of conservatism—'I recognize the utter seriousness of this horrible, horrible problem. But it's so serious that we can't address it, and supporting people who try is a worse option than just letting it go because doing so would "waste resources."'
I'm going to personally mail this Nicholas Martin 10 copies of the report when it's published and he can just shove the "wasting resources" excuse up his ignorant ass.
Sure, there may be a better strategy to prevent sexual assault than Tim's, but that better strategy will not be found by refusing to address the issue and accusing those who do of "fear-mongering" and ridiculing those who support the effort as "disappointing" and duped.
Nicholas Martin is the only one here who is trying to dupe anyone, selling negligence and irresponsibility as a snakeoil form of caution.
Ahhhh, that explains everything.
ReplyDeleteIf the proposed solution to a known problem will not work, why attempt it? That's not a conservative argument, that's a common-sense argument.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that it won't work at all, I'm saying it may not be the optimal solution.
ReplyDeleteThose are very different things. Something may work just fine and produce lots of good results, but there may be an even better way of doing its task. But that clearly does not mean that one should not pursue the first, less-than-optimal-but-effective way, especially while working on finding an even better method. That is what Martin was implying, and that is most certainly not common sense.
Dismissing Martin's valid points becase he supported Andreadis's opponent is pretty dumb, Seal. It's the kind of shortsightedness that suggests Andreadis and his supporters will be unable to compromise or play well with others. Perhaps admitting that Andreadis used misleading stats to address an important problem would be a big step in the right direction; then the SA could actually develop a statistical analysis that would be accurate and maybe as startling as the numbers that Andreadis and his supporters have recklessly thrown around...
ReplyDeleteActually, anonymous #2, I dismissed Martin's arguments before I knew that he was a supporter of an opposing candidate, as one can visibly see from the fact that Marie had to point it out to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd I seriously disagree with the term "misleading" being applied to the 17% stat. "Misleading" denotes some intention to fool or to induce an incorrect judgment. That was not the intention, even if the statistic may need to be refined. (Mostly because a number of rapes go unreported.) But the point is, Tim was absolutely clear about how he arrived at the number--all the math was posted on his facebook group throughout the entire campaign, and I'll bet if you email him, he will send you it again. There was no intention of fooling or causing incorrect judgments. The only intent was to highlight a problem with the most accurate statistic available.
In essence, unless you want to offer empirical or mathematical proof (and not an abstract accusation) that this statistic is false and that Tim willfully used it knowing it to be false, then drop the charge of misleading. That is bullshit, and saying so is not "be[ing]... unable to play well with others."
As Connor said, questioning this statistic is ultimately questioning either the competence or the intentions of Leah Prescott, the Coordinator of the Sexual Abuse Awareness Program. Do you wish to do that openly? Please, by all means go ahead. I just want to know where you stand. It would also help if you leave your name.
Every SA election, there's always some controversy like this... If I had nothing better to do, I'd spend a few hours searching the D's online archives to see how many sore loser op-eds appear there in the weeks following an election. The arguments are usually the same: my priorities are the ones you should have cared about. Instead, you voted for candidate X and his stupid priorities. Therefore, you're stupid.
ReplyDeleteIf you take all of the righteous indignation and douchebaggery out of Martin's op-ed, he makes a simple point: he thinks that Andreadis's campaign looks like it misled students by exaggerating the size of the sexual assault problem, and then promising to solve it. Martin sees that as either fearmongering or naivete. The fact remains that he failed to convince the student body of this, so Patinkin doesn't get to put SA on his resume and get quoted in the D every other week.
I think Andreadis's victory is great. The SA has been useless for years. He picked a problem that people care about and promised to take a crack at solving it. Even if he fails miserably, he will have done more than just about any previous SA president to respond to students' concerns. If people are legitimately concerned about his solution, they should either offer their assistance or shut up. The SA is sitting on a pile of money and Andreadis has promised to direct some of it toward addressing what many perceive to be a significant problem. Some would see this as an opportunity.
It's really time to move on. I know I wrote the op-ed, and I still feel the same way now that I did then. But, what's done is done. I don't have a problem at all with Andreadis. He' s a good guy in my experience. I just disagree with his campaigning. That 17% stat was very MISLEADING. Thanks for the shoutout by the way Marie. I apreciate it. Although, I'm sure you have better things to be doing, like naming yourself senior class marshall. Bottom line is, I hope Andreadis does make a difference because hoping differently would be unjustly mean-spirited. However, I still do not support how he attained his position...and I'm leaving my comments to that.
ReplyDeleteI know I said I was done, but I just couldn't resist. I also wanted to say thanks to Andrew Seal for his thought provoking original post. What can I say, you were dead on in your conservative label of me. That's what I am, a regular fucking Bill O'Reilly i guess, a conservative with no intelectual backing. Way to throw around labels, one of the points on which you seem to criticize my op-ed. But alas, I just looked on Facebook and you're friends with Tim Andreadis. "Ahhh, that explains everything." Thanks, and have fun riding your moral high-horse jackass. With comments like your previous ones, I personally bestow to you the honor of being most disappointing of all.
ReplyDeleteActually, Nick, I meant only that your argument leads to a conservative position on the issue—essentially doing nothing.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am friends with Tim, but I never tried to pass myself off as an objective observer of the campaign. The fact that you didn't acknowledge your affiliation with Adam's campaign is a bit underhanded, I think.
But hey, if you stand by your op-ed, i stand by my post. Your op-ed was a transparent effort to undermine Tim, no matter what you say now.
wait, i realize you still might not get nuance, so i'll explain why i characterized your argument as conservative.
ReplyDeleteConservative actually means someone who wants to keep things the way they are, or the way they were in the near past. if you make an argument that leads to things staying the same or regressing to a point in the near past, that is a conservative argument, regardless of your political affiliation. That is actually what I meant.