RAG Bumps and Corrections

And I had been all excited about promoting it! The Hands on a Plasma TV game has apparently been called off for lack of willing participants. Instead, the television will be awarded to whoever can estimate the number of candies in a jar. Snore. Well, at least people can fool with the game by eating candy. Also, the more interesting (and quickly running out of time to register) Assassin game has dropped the water-pistol based version that I alluded to earlier, and is in fact based on stickering. So instead of ambushing your target with highly pressurized water, recklessly splashing innocent civilians in the process (there is always collateral damage), you will instead sneak up behind your target and slap a sticker on their back, or elsewhere on their person, to gain victory. We hear that a game of Umbrella Assassin was called off due to the spate of lovely clear weather we’ve been enduring lately.

Some Comments on C&A

Well, predictably, the Beaver’s opinion pieces today are more or less a reprise of those from several weeks back, basically for and against the Israel Divestment motion (the more photogenic and less ornery child of the Motion on Apartheid from a few weeks ago) with familiar faces on both sides. As I noted briefly earlier, there is, however, an interesting comment buried in the piece on the facing page by Shayaan Afsar, a member of the F&S committee and a candidate for Treasurer, suggesting that while this discussion of divest this, apartheid that, arms traffickers the other, is all well and good, it might be a better idea for the Students Union to come up with a general policy for the way it invests its funds. Bravo to that, I say – let’s nip this issue in the bud and prevent future controversies that may damage the SU. Hell, why not invest the money in apple orchards and supply the Three Tuns with its own cider to cut out evil corporate overlords at Magners and Strongbow while we’re at it. What do you say??

But over on Page 07, inevitably, we find Emiliano Huet-Vaughn vacillating (he would say ‘accommodating’) to the various complaints about the previous Motion on Apartheid, whilst Alex Teytelboym convulses with rage that the motion just won’t stay dead. The strategy of the motion appears to be one of seeking common ground with those who voted against the previous motion as a result of its use of the term apartheid. Huet-Vaughn writes: “if we take at face value the words of those who spoke against the first motion, such a consensus should not be difficult to achieve.”

This is a strong point to make, as generaly speaking the opponents of the prior motion did not deny that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories had serious negative consequences (Huet-Vaughn even quotes the words used by Dan Dolan in his speech to the UGM). The question, however, is whether the UGM is ready to again consider a motion on this subject, and if the inclusion of various concessions to the opposition may be viewed as pandering to the undecided voters who abstained in the previous vote. It could well be that a faction of the previous supporters may be weary of dealing with contentious issues such as this (and indeed one can see from the early rhetoric of the GenSec race that a return to ’student issues’ is definitely the meme of the moment) and have changed their minds.

Teytelboym, for his part, argues that Huet-Vaughn and Co. have missed the point; the UGM didn’t defeat the previous motion simply because of the use of ‘apartheid’, but given the short period they had to argue against the motion opponents seized on that as only the most egregious of the “numerous inconsistencies of the motion.” He also assaults the sources provided for the Union Notes section of the motion, writing that “in this prestigious academic institution, we are very aware of using reliable sources, but to quote the same three texts to describe the expulsion of Arabs during the conception of the state of Israel in 1948 is simply insulting to students and scholars of this crisis.”

So what’s going to happen? Well the Observer has heard from some quarters that the opponents of the motion have low expectations of victory, and it is notable that the Jewish Society and Israeli Society have declared, in a joint letter to the Beaver, that they will not be involved in fighting the motion and will focus on raising money for RAG instead. Still, in the first motion the opponents did not expect to win but prevailed nonetheless – it is possible that the same could recur, for the fatigue reason mentioned above, or for other reasons, for instance a question of procedure in the voting. There will be a video link set up in the New Theater in case of another overflow crowd, but the actual method of voting has not yet been announced, and according to James Bacon in the Beaver’s lead story, will not be announced until the beginning of the UGM itself.

This one won’t be over ’til its over.

Quiet… Maybe Too Quiet.

Usually Tuesday is one of our big days, but we’ve been lying silent all morning. Same goes for our fellow blogs, who have increased in number, if not posting rates this week. Don’t worry, we haven’t caught another stomach bug, but don’t forget that your humble Observer is also a downtrodden student.

RAG Week is on in full force, and today is chock full of events (in case you hadn’t noticed the pink tutu clad buskers on Houghton Street today) to check out. There’s also a new edition of the Beaver on the stands today, and it includes feature coverage of the SU elections – you better believe we’ll have a look at those pages in todays Beaver Review (which is forthcoming), but the news coverage showed a rather marked similarity to our own Campus News coverage.

The C&A section is a whole different story, and expect a separate post on it this afternoon. Complete with another showdown of Emiliano Huet-Vaughn and Alex Teytelboym on the Israel Divestment, the most interesting report to us is probably the one most ignored by readers: a plea by F&S member (and presumed Treasurer candidate) Shayaan Afsar for a coherent and comprehensive ‘ethical investment strategy’ to govern the SU’s finances – not just in the context of Israel/Palestine or Sudan or Arms Dealers, but in all kinds of ethical investments. We’ll see just how that plays out in the coming weeks.