Election week yields eclectic art, conversation and T-shirts
By Christina Jenkins
May 11, 2004 9:00 p.m.
Some fraction of 20,000 students woke up to Josh Lawson’s
grinning mug this morning, and that’s not something that
happens every day ““ just ask him.
“It’s weird,” says the presidential candidate
who won a general representative spot last year. “But every
year you have to swallow a certain amount of your own
hesitations.”
And so it begins again.
Tuesday on Bruin Walk saw the beginning of campaigning for
undergraduate student government elections, replete with Lawson
& Company’s (also known as the Equal Access Coalition)
eight glossy soap opera-style heads blown up nine sizes too big and
trash cans packed with the same propaganda.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, if you didn’t know, came out
on Tuesday in support of independent Doug Ludlow’s race for
president. His cardboard likeness was seen sporting a bright yellow
Vote Doug t-shirt around 11 a.m. and Bruin Republican Nick Louw,
speaking on his behalf, calls the governor an “avid
supporter.”
The club concedes it can’t speak for “the real
one,” but cardboard Arnold filled out his cotton T-shirt
quite nicely ““ all the more impressive for a Republican
wearing the clothes of a candidate known for his ties to the Bruin
Democrats.
The college Republicans, by the way, confess they’re not
fans of the yellow: Matt Knee says he might have preferred blue,
for the benefit of eliciting confusion from leftover loyalists of
the now-defunct Students United for Reform and Equality (SURE)
slate affiliated with the same color ““ those “low
information voters,” as he puts it.
Meanwhile, the four would-be presidents, staked out on different
corners of Bruin Walk throughout the morning, laughing awkwardly
when asked if they’re going to bother with attending class
this week.
“Noooo,” says Ludlow.
“Things are going to be on hold for a bit,” says
Allende Palma/Saracho of Students First!.
“Yeah, I kind of … I’m not going,” says
independent Arash Mozayan Isfahani.
For Lawson’s part, he says this week’s class
schedule won’t look much different that any other. Point
taken.
At 11:50 a.m., a fly lands on soap opera-Lawson’s left
cheek. A Students First! groupie, fliering directly below it, grabs
his camera phone.
“It looks like a mole, I gotta take a picture,” he
says.
A few minutes after noon, Adam Harmetz heads down Bruin Walk
from the dorms, taking flyers from EAC’s Alex Gruenberg and
from Mozayan Isfahani, who doesn’t betray any
recognition.
Harmetz, who ran for president with SURE last year, is playing
anonymous this elections season. He’s not quite
“avoiding Bruin Walk like the plague,” as he says of
another high-profile SURE has-been who’s still on campus, but
he’s staying low. He is working on independent Peter
Bautista’s campaign for Financial Supports commissioner and
while he does have favorites, he says the races need to play out
without him.
But as we’re walking up Bruin Walk toward Powell,
it’s apparent that the painful evolution of last year’s
SURE into this year’s EAC is something he can’t let go
of.
“I’m pissed they’re using quotes and
Bruinvote.com. I really think it misleads voters,” he says
about EAC using SURE trademarks. Then, reconsidering the
printability of that adjective, he says, “Use
disturbed.”
Friends, he said, wanted him to run again ““ but it
“wasn’t going to happen.” He says he’s
thinking about wearing an old SURE T-shirt today or Thursday,
“the one when Dahle ran two years ago.
Thing is, it probably says “˜vote for the quotes.’
Can’t have that.”
Jenkins can be reached at [email protected].
