On Dec. 12, 2015, 196 countries committed to adopting the Paris Agreement, an agreement between nations to dedicate efforts towards reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

The goal of the agreement, ultimately, was to slow the rate of global warming — more specifically, to prevent the earth from reaching 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. It is already 1 degree Celsius above those levels. Because of the potentially devastating implications for island nations due to rising sea levels accompanying global warming, Ari Shapiro from NPR reported that representatives from some of those areas even took on the slogan “1.5 to stay alive” — advocating for limiting the rise to 1.5 degrees rather than 2. Just over a year ago, on Earth Day 2016, the United States and dozens of other nations signed the Accords.

Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the agreement.

We’ve written this kind of editorial before. We bemoaned Trump’s detrimental lack of regard for the environment all the way back when he proposed to cut nearly a third of the EPA’s budget. We shouted into the void about choking air pollution, violent weather and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

There’s no point in rehashing all of that again. Don’t get us wrong — those problems are looming as heavily as they ever were — but Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement presents a new, ugly problem. When he proposed cuts to the EPA, he made America look idiotic to a lot of Americans. But yesterday, when he withdrew from a global pact intended to further the greater good of the human race, he made America look idiotic to the entire developed world.

Our country, with the flick of one small wrist, just bowed out of the only international climate change agreement ever established. You know who didn’t back out? China. Russia. North and South Korea. By withdrawing from this collective, Donald Trump has not only disregarded the potentially devastating consequences of climate change, but he has also sacrificed yet another piece of leadership that afforded America the status of global superpower.

How many pieces do we have left?

Artwork by James Mariano at The Triangle

Drexel University officially announced May 25 that the Alpha Tau chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon will be suspended for five years — but to us, TKE’s suspension leaves  more questions than answers.

Here’s what we know.

We know that three allegations of sexual assault were reported to TKE in the last month (more details on that in the Crime Log and in our past articles). We know that TKE will not be recognized by the university and cannot hold any official meetings or events for five years. We know that, according to the university’s statement, this is at least in part because of violations of the alcohol policy.

Many aspects of this issue, however, are still unclear.

Firstly, what’s the status of the investigation into sexual assaults that allegedly occurred at the fraternity a few weeks ago? How will the university decide whether to sanction individuals or the fraternity, and will they bring further sanctions against the fraternity at the conclusion of the investigations if brothers are found guilty?

And what’s going to happen to the TKE house? Drexel is the owner of the property according to City of Philadelphia, but TKE’s website says that this is solely for tax purposes and that the fraternity can buy back the property for one dollar at any point in time. If they’re suspended by the university, can they still buy it back? Or can Drexel refuse to sell back the house?

Another issue needing clarity is the reasoning for the sanction itself.

“The Alpha Tau Chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity has been sanctioned through the University’s Student Conduct process for failure to comply with the University’s alcohol policy and regulations with a five-year suspension of recognition,” the University’s statement reads.

It’s not clear whether the justification for TKE’s sanction is the policies and regulations related to alcohol or alcohol policies and other regulations. Were there unregistered socials, and did these play a part in the final sanction? Further details about the reasoning for the sanctions are needed.

We understand that this situation is complicated, and there are some details that may be sensitive. However, because it impacts such a wide range of students, it would be beneficial if at least some of these inquiries could be addressed more thoroughly.

What will we owe to our alma mater?

Answers to this question will inevitably vary. Drexel University will be a line on our resumes, but everyone’s had a different experience. All most of us can hope that we’ll walk away with an education, a few friends that might last a lifetime and a good deal of life skills. And if that’s the case, and our experience nets positive, we may find ourselves at an alumni weekend sometime in the future.

“My word,” we’ll say, “what a time it was to be alive. Can you believe we went to Drexel when it didn’t even have one quad and now it has FIVE?”

“NOW SIX, you’re out of the loop, old chum!” an alumni planner will no doubt chime in, waving a freshly printed map in your face.

Drexel University, now celebrating its 125th anniversary, will host Alumni Weekend of 2017 on May 19 and 20. It’ll be crawling with Drexel graduates talking of days when Drexel was still an Institute and most women majored in home economics.

Yes, yes, our alumni remind us that the campus we call home was home to many generations before us and will be home to many after.

The importance of Alumni Weekend is not to be underestimated. It’s a way for the alumni to come back to their alma mater, make sure it’s still in good shape, and see how it’s grown and changed. It’s also a huge opportunity for clubs who have past members back on campus. We can compare our organizations’ activities and learn about how Drexel used to be.

Alumni Weekend is also a great chance to network. It allows alumni to connect with undergraduates and current faculty. It also allows students the rare opportunity to connect with people older than us on topics we are currently living (the class of 1927 experienced being “in industry,” too) and have fun together.

Not in the least, Alumni Weekend allows the university to bring together Dragons and show its appreciation for their support in making its past goals realities. It makes it so that alumni have a set day to be welcomed back. No one is in a rush to class, or to a final. People come to explore, tour, learn, reconnect and meet one another through the common bond of being a Dragon!

So to all our returning alumni, welcome home.

We’re glad to have you here, on our ever changing campus.

On May 1, Drexel Socialists held a demonstration protesting Drexel University administration’s refusal to declare the school a sanctuary campus.

There doesn’t seem to be a strict definition of sanctuary campus. The consensus seems to be that if a university declares itself a sanctuary campus, it means that it will offer certain protections for undocumented students. The term is a spin-off of sanctuary cities, which are cities that do not fully cooperate with government officials when it comes to deporting undocumented immigrants.

Despite threats from President Trump to strip federal funding from sanctuary cities, Philadelphia remains one of them (though Mayor Kenney prefers the official term Fourth Amendment City).

Drexel President John A. Fry explained in an email to the university community Dec. 9 that the university would not be designating itself a sanctuary campus. At first, this decision may seem like a blow to those who support undocumented students. However, this was a heavily nuanced and carefully considered call – and it is important to understand all aspects behind it before making a judgment.

The decision, as Fry explained in the email, did not stem from a lack of support. Rather, it was much the opposite. He explained this in the context of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which allows undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to receive renewable two-year deferred action periods.

“DACA is a sensible, humane and helpful program, and Drexel fully supports it. Moreover, if DACA is suspended or repealed, the University will support our undocumented students to the fullest extent of the law,” the email read.

“Such a declaration [of sanctuary campus status] may have some appeal, but the concept has no basis in law and the University has no authority to bar enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws on its campus. And by making it clear that we respect the rule of law, the University is more likely to receive a good hearing in the event that DACA comes under review again,” the email continued.

What Fry said, as far as we can tell, was basically that declaring the university a sanctuary campus has more cons than pros for undocumented students. While it is a declaration of support, is not a legal designation, and thus does not inherently carry any actual protections for those students. On the other hand, it may signal to the government a possible unwillingness to cooperate with the law. By remaining in good standing with government officials, the university hopes that officials will look favorably upon our school when deciding whether they should preserve our student’s DACA rights, should that ever come under consideration.

This issue is more complicated than sanctuary campus or not; it’s not a binary choice. Rather than focusing on labels that don’t carry any actual legal standing, students should ensure that they understand the complexity of the university’s stance.

Artwork by James Mariano at The Triangle

Philadelphia native H. H. Holmes, subject of Erik Larson’s popular 2003 book “Devil in the White City,” was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1890s for the murder of his business partner. He is more famous for having allegedly murdered several dozen if not hundreds of people during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where he lured guests to his “hotel,” which was home to trap doors, gas chambers and a crematorium, though he was never officially charged for these crimes. H. H. Holmes was hanged at a Philadelphia prison May 7, 1896.

Or was he?

Rumors have been swirling for over a hundred years about the possibility that Holmes evaded execution, and that the corpse in his burial plot is not his own. As of this week, NBC10 reports that the exhumation process has begun to determine once and for all, through DNA analysis by the University of Pennsylvania, if Holmes is in fact buried in the grave that bears his name in Holy Cross Cemetery, just a twenty-minute car ride from University City.

From an anthropological perspective, we see the value in this. It will put to rest a speculation that is over a century old, about a man that is often referred to as the first serial killer in the United States. It is an intriguing and perhaps essential part of our history, ugliness notwithstanding.

But it isn’t anthropologists who brought the exhumation request to a Delaware County court, according to the Associated Press; it was his own great-grandchildren. A family member told the AP that the great-grandchildren were not commenting.

Why, from his descendents’ perspective, could this really matter? Is it a matter of pride? Are they trying to prove with certainty that their ancestor paid for his crime? If so, how much redeeming value could that possibly have, considering he was still a serial killer with a fairly horrific modus operandi?

Perhaps it’s a matter of curiosity, the way people look into their family trees to discover quirks about their ancestors. But is curiosity a powerful enough motivator to dig up a body that is surrounded by layers of concrete and subject it to DNA testing? What will they gain from knowing with certainty that he was executed? How will they feel if it turns out he wasn’t? Or, further still, that the nearly 121-year-old corpse does not have enough intact DNA for a conclusive answer?

All of these questions aside, there is one issue that stands out uniquely. Anywhere from two to 200 people were killed in Holmes’ mansion of horror — and many if not all of them were cremated. The great-grandchildren of these victims do not have the privilege of an exhumation. Many of them can’t even be certain about their ancestors’ fate, and they never will have it. There is no justice for them. From this perspective, do Holmes’ descendants really have the right to ask whether their great-murderous-grandfather died of a hanging in Philadelphia or somewhere else while hiding from the law? Have they thought about the pain it may cause the victims’ families if it is determined that the perpetrator never faced consequences for what he did?

After much consideration, this exhumation seems like it may be raising more questions than it will provide answers. Either way, events like this, with such historical significance and deep-rooted controversy, don’t happen every day, and they certainly don’t happen in Philadelphia’s backyard. Though it likely will not impact any of us directly, it may be in our best interest to pay attention to what happens next. Anthropologists are digging 120 years into the past to determine the fate of a man who is perhaps America’s most notorious serial murder, and there may be no precedent for the implications of what they discover.

Artwork by James Mariano at The Triangle

Philadelphia native H. H. Holmes, subject of Erik Larson’s popular 2003 book “Devil in the White City,” was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1890s for the murder of his business partner. He is more famous for having allegedly murdered several dozen if not hundreds of people during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where he lured guests to his “hotel,” which was home to trap doors, gas chambers and a crematorium, though he was never officially charged for these crimes. H. H. Holmes was hanged at a Philadelphia prison May 7, 1896.

Or was he?

Rumors have been swirling for over a hundred years about the possibility that Holmes evaded execution, and that the corpse in his burial plot is not his own. As of this week, NBC10 reports that the exhumation process has begun to determine once and for all, through DNA analysis by the University of Pennsylvania, if Holmes is in fact buried in the grave that bears his name in Holy Cross Cemetery, just a twenty-minute car ride from University City.

From an anthropological perspective, we see the value in this. It will put to rest a speculation that is over a century old, about a man that is often referred to as the first serial killer in the United States. It is an intriguing and perhaps essential part of our history, ugliness notwithstanding.

But it isn’t anthropologists who brought the exhumation request to a Delaware County court, according to the Associated Press; it was his own great-grandchildren. A family member told the AP that the great-grandchildren were not commenting.

Why, from his descendents’ perspective, could this really matter? Is it a matter of pride? Are they trying to prove with certainty that their ancestor paid for his crime? If so, how much redeeming value could that possibly have, considering he was still a serial killer with a fairly horrific modus operandi?

Perhaps it’s a matter of curiosity, the way people look into their family trees to discover quirks about their ancestors. But is curiosity a powerful enough motivator to dig up a body that is surrounded by layers of concrete and subject it to DNA testing? What will they gain from knowing with certainty that he was executed? How will they feel if it turns out he wasn’t? Or, further still, that the nearly 121-year-old corpse does not have enough intact DNA for a conclusive answer?

All of these questions aside, there is one issue that stands out uniquely. Anywhere from two to 200 people were killed in Holmes’ mansion of horror — and many if not all of them were cremated. The great-grandchildren of these victims do not have the privilege of an exhumation. Many of them can’t even be certain about their ancestors’ fate, and they never will have it. There is no justice for them. From this perspective, do Holmes’ descendants really have the right to ask whether their great-murderous-grandfather died of a hanging in Philadelphia or somewhere else while hiding from the law? Have they thought about the pain it may cause the victims’ families if it is determined that the perpetrator never faced consequences for what he did?

After much consideration, this exhumation seems like it may be raising more questions than it will provide answers. Either way, events like this, with such historical significance and deep-rooted controversy, don’t happen every day, and they certainly don’t happen in Philadelphia’s backyard. Though it likely will not impact any of us directly, it may be in our best interest to pay attention to what happens next. Anthropologists are digging 120 years into the past to determine the fate of a man who is perhaps America’s most notorious serial murder, and there may be no precedent for the implications of what they discover.

The following is the opinion of the Emerald’s editorial board and not Emerald Media Group as a whole. The Emerald Editorial Board exists to provide the newsroom a voice on prominent campus issues. It operates separately from the objective work of our reporters, giving our organization a platform to create and continue a dialogue on campus.

The board’s members include Sararosa Davies, senior arts reporter; Meerah Powell, digital managing editor; Will Campbell, associate news editor; Kylee O’Connor, sports reporter; Mark Kellman, engagement editor; Cooper Green, editor in chief; Patience Greene, opinion columnist; Billy Manggala, opinion columnist; Alec Cowan, opinion editor.

Starting fall 2017, all incoming freshmen will be required to live on campus in University of Oregon residence halls barring a short list of specific exemptions. Admin said the decision was tied to data that showed students who live on campus are 80 percent more likely to graduate within six years. Despite this, many are angry with the new policy because it appears to be a money-driven move and it strips away the freedom for a student to choose where they live.

Although UO’s stated intentions for on-campus living were inherently good and backed by statistics, administration failed to come up with an approach that incentivized living in the dorms and instead made it a requirement without much public discourse from the student body.

In enforcing the live-on requirement, UO administration should accommodate a broader set of exemptions allowing students to live off-campus their first year. What UO administration failed to recognize is that a large handful of students legitimately cannot live in the residence halls for reasons more than those they are currently set to allow.

Students can’t afford the cost:

For an in-state student, over half of costs will come from housing and living. Standard room rates with a standard meal plan cost approximately $11,950 for nine months, not including winter break. This actually costs more than in-state tuition and fees, which is $11,931.

Off-campus housing options can be expensive as well. The luxury suites of The Hub can run a person over $1000 a month, but for those looking, Eugene offers a plethora of $200-300 rooms in 100-year-old houses.

The freedom of choice allows a thrifty student to save a few thousand dollars a year, even including food. Although UO Housing is working on offering cheaper room rates — prices actually decreased slightly for 2017-18 — the cost of living in a dorm could make or break whether some students decide to attend the school.

Pathway Oregon scholarship students receive the Pell Grant, tuition paid by the federal government for financially burdened students, which has a maximum of $5,920 next year, for their tuition and fees, but do not receive aid for housing and living. Most Pathway recipients receive financial aid or outside help for the cost, but having to borrow $12,000 when cheaper options are available is unfair to financially struggling students.

UO should offer the choice for a student to evaluate their own financial situation, and if it appears that the live-on requirement will impact them negatively, UO should accommodate.

Students with mental health issues or social concerns:

UO claims that the live-on requirement will be beneficial for students coming to Eugene for the first time, as they build a sense of community and gain access to student resources. The goal is to immerse students into a college lifestyle so they have a more successful first year and an easier time adapting.

But the dorm environment is not for everybody. In an average UO dorm hall, a student will share a dorm floor with a few dozen tenants, including their roommate who will, in most halls, be sleeping no further than several feet away.

The hall can get rowdy, which may negatively impact study habits. Tenants will blast music, and many will have to share a bathroom and be exposed to much more concentrated and frequent partying than in a one- or two-bedroom apartment.

For some, this is the college dream — for others, who have mental health issues, social anxiety or any other social concern, this is an absolute nightmare.

Some people need a quiet space, some like to be alone and some can’t handle the pressure of living with that many strangers for an entire year. These people should not have to live in a dorm if they don’t want to. UO shouldn’t be forcing students to break out of their comfort zone — that’s not the university’s decision to make.

UO could accommodate for these people through exemption via a doctor’s note that cites mental health or social anxiety concerns.

Bottom line, students shouldn’t have to live on campus if they don’t want to.

If one of the primary goals of a university is to prepare students for the real world, being forced to live in one room with a peer in buildings with hotel-style cramping isn’t realistic. For motivated students who don’t see this lifestyle as a fit, UO should offer the opportunity to get out of it.

If the university wanted to encourage students to live in the dorms, it could have handled it in a more open way that included perspectives of student leaders and academia. Instead, students are left with what appears to be a revenue-driven decision poorly disguised as a community-building experience.

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Comic by James Mariano at The Triangle

More than 500 cities took part in the Earth Day “March for Science” on Saturday, April 22.

Explained in basic terms, the event was a retaliation against two things — the shrinking number of scientific research grants in recent years and the predisposition some citizens and politicians have acquired to discredit scientific consensuses in the name of convenience.

“We face a possible future where people not only ignore scientific evidence but seek to eliminate it entirely,” reads the March for Science’s about page. “The application of science to policy is not a partisan issue.”

What the about page fails to mention, however, is that when people become ignorant of scientific evidence, they’re also pushing back against fact-based evaluations and critical thinking — two things we all play some sort of role in here as students, professors or administrators.

When politicians or citizens write off what scientific consensus has found to be true through tedious rounds of questioning, research, experimentation, and revision, it offends the integrity of all academic institutions and those who conduct research or educate the next generation of researchers, at them.

Of course, our country’s navigation away from science-based policy did not happen overnight. Research funding and the public’s tendency to write off research findings have been steadily declining over the last few decades, according to NIH funding records.

At least part of this is likely due to the segregation of the scientific community and the inability of many scientists to communicate their (understandably complicated) findings and evidence with those in non-scientific fields.

The process of scientific communication needs revision. Currently, scientists publish almost exclusively in academic journals, specific to their field. Because these journals are field-specific — meant for other scientists in their field — authors often write with terms that makes their studies inaccessible to the average person.

This specificity means they’re also inaccessible to the average reporter tasked with interpreting the research. Weidling neither the scientific qualifications nor the background to make them apt for the job, they do so at their own discretion. In too many cases, this leads to misinterpreted findings, in which correlation and covariance within the research are falsely translated into cause and effect.

Take, for example, a 2012 scenario in which the New York Times’ “Well” section published an article, based on recent research, under the headline, “How Exercise Can Prime the Brain for Addiction.”

“Scary, right? One minute you’re cruising along on the treadmill, and next thing you know, you’re ADDICTED TO COCAINE,” one writer from an American popular science magazine commented, mocking the flub.

In fact, it turned out that the original study lent no evidence to the argument that exercise and addiction were inherently linked, as the Times’ author had suggested. The study was instead about the plausible effects the timing of exercise may have on those with addiction issues. Its title, for comparison, read, “How Exercise May Make Addictions Better, or Worse.”

There’s much more knee-slapping hilarity along the pathway this research took to reach newsstands. We won’t get into it in detail, but it’s well worth a read.

The point we’re trying to make here, is that the amount of misinterpretation between scientists and their research and the public is all too frightening, all too common, and it’s sure as heck played a huge role in our society’s ever-degrading trust in the scientific process.

As participants in an academic institution with strong ties to research and major scientific communities in Philadelphia, we are in a, perhaps unique, position to take steps to prevent this kind of miscommunication in the future.

Educators, in particular, should be placing a strong emphasis on training STEM majors not only to conduct scientific research, but to communicate it. So that researchers will be able to communicate in simple, although not over-generalized, terms that allow their science to be easily digested by the public.

Teach them not to limit the publication of their scientific findings to journals. Because if you want your research to be interpreted correctly, and considered correctly, by policy wonks and citizens who may not understand the intricacies of neuron communication, or chemical reactions within the earth’s atmosphere, or what have you, you should be talking about it conversationally, yourself.

We have tons of new media at our disposal in the 21st century —  media that wasn’t around when the scientific review process was invented, and it gives us the potential to communicate our scientific findings in more vibrant ways than ever before.

Utilize it. With blogs, podcasts and lectures breaking down scientific research on YouTube. March for Science was only the beginning of the movement. It’s up to those within the scientific community to reshape it.

By using new methods to communicate findings with those outside of their field, they can increase the likelihood of our representatives incorporating scientific research into policy.

James Mariano: The Triangle

According to Fox 29, the construction site for Temple University’s new library is also home to a sign that reads “No Foul Language.”

Madison Construction, the company responsible for the hired workers does not allow cursing on its sites as a rule. It’s kind of unclear why, although the average bear could speculate a few reasons off the bat — maybe it’s for religious reasons, or they keep it clean for the neighborhood’s sake (there are children around here!), or maybe at some point there was an “incident” related to language where someone lost a foot.

Fox 29 also interviewed a Temple student about their thoughts on the sign and the student claimed not to understand it. Why wasn’t foul language allowed? It’s nothing college students haven’t heard before. In fact, going to college in and of itself is kind of like taking an unofficial course in swearing. We learn how to twist the f-bomb into all sorts of different parts of speech — adjectives, verbs, adverbs, interjections. Really advanced college culture proteges might even sprinkle it into their anecdotes in pronoun form.

Swearing is part of the culture on most college campuses. It’s a safe zone where students don’t have to worry about offending anyone. It becomes a kind of common language, thrown around casually. We don’t have to watch our language in public because our community is made up almost exclusively of our peers.

Studies surrounding swearing have also found that it relieves stress. “Mythbusters” even did an episode once where they exposed five people to “pain inducing cold” — participants were allowed to swear in the first trial and had to use fake swear words in the second. The results found that spewing foul language increased the sufferer’s stamina by an average of 30 percent. Some psycholinguists even claim that swear words allow people to communicate emotional information more effectively and express their anger without acting out physically.

And maybe that’s why at the same time college courses have become more and more demanding, they’re also becoming a kind of safe haven for swearing. Academics are stressful. Figuring out how to live on our own for the first time is stressful. And dealing with people? Especially, in group projects? Well, f— if that ain’t stressful, too.

Language builds cultures. It reflects cultures. The way we talk about things affects how we come to conceptualize and explain them.

So we guess our point is that the sign Madison Construction put up put a little thought in our heads — does swearing affect how we construct things, too?

The following is the opinion of the Emerald’s editorial board and not Emerald Media Group as a whole. The Emerald Editorial Board exists to provide the newsroom a voice on prominent campus issues. It operates separately from the objective work of our reporters, giving our organization a platform to create and continue a dialogue on campus.

The board’s members include Sararosa Davies, senior arts reporter; Meerah Powell, digital managing editor; Will Campbell, associate news editor; Kylee O’Connor, sports reporter; Mark Kellman, engagement editor; Cooper Green, editor in chief; Patience Greene, opinion columnist; Billy Manggala, opinion columnist; Alec Cowan, opinion editor.

This is normally where the Emerald would write an endorsement of an ASUO candidate. However, students only have one option this year and that creates two big questions: how did this happen and what does it mean?

This election season’s only campaign slate, UO For You, paints its top three platform goals in broad strokes: accessibility, inclusivity and affordability. More specifically, Amy Schenk and her running mates, Internal VP Tess Mor and External VP Vickie Gimm, want to tackle the tuition crisis, improve food security for students, make mental health services more accessible and push cultural competency training for students, specifically incoming freshmen.

A one-slate campaign is unprecedented in recent ASUO history but it isn’t exactly an accident. Schenk, Mor and Gimm are not natural allies, and each have distinct views. Instead of running against each other, they decided to band together and form a “coalition,” or what Schenk referred to as a “student movement” at the Emerald town hall.

The positives of this action are untested, but at face value, they communicate a desire to compromise over political differences. The slate members’ views, which are often at odds, may slow processes to a gridlock — but they may also ensure that policies and decisions are drafted through different viewpoints even after the election is long in the past.

The downfall is that a one-choice race isn’t democratic. Even with the slate’s visionary platform and efforts at representing diverse opinions, students won’t have the opportunity to express via vote which perspective they align with and what speaks to them. Students didn’t even get to select the diverse “supergroup” that formed the coalition.

This one-slate campaign is said to be an attempt from inside ASUO to clean up politics, with the goals of making it more welcoming and open-minded. Instead, it comes off as even more inaccessible than before.

Although ASUO hasn’t been renowned for its openness. A small portion of the student population votes in these elections — 24 percent last year — meaning that even when there is competition, candidates only need to focus on a few major groups to sway the vote, such as Greek Life or freshmen.

More than voting itself, the competition from other slates is what drives candidates; debates expose weaknesses and strengths, and strong competition forces candidates to perfect their platforms. Gimm skipping the town hall for a class should lead students to question just how motivated the slate is to communicate with its voters.

But competition can also breed empty promises and shameless pandering to voters. ASUO has a history of competition bringing out ugly displays of power. This is part of the reason UO For You was happy to run unopposed. But surely there is a better solution to cleaning up ASUO politics than eliminating choice entirely.

The bigger concern is what this situation says about UO’s student population. The same school year students protested and cried over the national presidential election, only one person runs for campus president and students look the other way. Were those protests the dying gasps of a now fully apathetic student body, or do students just not care about on-campus politics? If it’s the latter, can you blame them? ASUO hasn’t traditionally been forthright in educating the campus on what it does and how it operates.

But students should care. ASUO distributes approximately $16 million yearly — that’s student money. If you are involved in extracurricular activities on campus, you probably have something at stake in this election. It would be a mistake to imagine ASUO won’t make any changes to current funding. Sitting President Quinn Haaga, for example, chose not to grant club sports a $50,000 request that ASUO governments gave yearly in recent history.

It is possible that UO For You’s vision of political compromise will prove successful and demonstrate that ASUO officials are trying to find different and better ways to serve students. But regardless, there’s not much that students can do now. Barring a bizarre and unanticipated write-in movement, UO For You will be next year’s government.

But it’s not too late for the student population to change its outlook on campus government. If getting involved and changing ASUO culture from the inside doesn’t sound appealing, it’s crucial for students to remain skeptical and create systems that hold those in power accountable. Attend senate meetings, host rallies or contact ASUO members directly. Demand interaction. What ASUO really needs, maybe more than a lecture on democracy, is a culture change.

In the meantime, let’s hope UO For You is as ready to lead as promised, because — for better or worse — we’re stuck with them.

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