Student Life Archives

Margaret Bauer

Of the 11 states holding elections for governor this November, Missouri’s race is shaping up to be one of the closest. Republican Matt Blunt, the current secretary of state, is running against Democrat and State Auditor Claire McCaskill, who defeated incumbent Governor Bob Holden in the Democratic primaries last month.

A poll conducted for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KMOV-TV by Maryland-based Research 2000 last week showed 46 percent of likely voters favoring Blunt and 45 percent favoring McCaskill, with nine percent of voters undecided.

Blunt’s one-point lead in the poll falls within the 3.5 percent sampling margin of error of the survey, meaning that the race currently stands in a statistical dead heat.

The most important issues in the election, as listed by the 801 likely voters surveyed, were health care, education, security, taxes and the economy. While most respondents listed health care as the issue more important than any other, many also indicated that they valued one of the other issues listed above instead, showing that Missouri voters currently consider a number of issues to be significant.

The poll also showed that McCaskill has an edge over Blunt in the state’s urban centers around St. Louis and Kansas City, while Blunt fared better than McCaskill in central and southern Missouri.

Historically, the two major urban centers at the edges of the state have been comfortably Democratic, while the area in between has supported the GOP. This trend is often noted by political analysts who describe the relatively even balance of Democratic and Republican voters in Missouri as a mirror of the country at large, and it appears to be holding in this year’s gubernatorial race.

Holden’s Woes

Current Missouri governor Bob Holden was the first incumbent to be defeated in a primary election in more than a decade, as McCaskill edged him out last month with 52 percent of the vote to Holden’s 45 percent. Holden, whose office had been in political turmoil from the beginning of his term, had been dubbed “one-term Bob” by political opponents.

Holden began his term as governor with an extravagant $1 million inaugural ball, an expense he had trouble explaining after he was later forced to make a number of unpopular budget cuts as the Missouri economy weakened.

For the first time in 50 years, Republicans took control of the Missouri state Senate during Holden’s term, crippling his ability to effect policy changes. Ensuing battles with senate Republicans have been particularly fierce-Holden’s vetoes have been overridden three times, which is more veto overrides than Missouri had seen in the past 150 years.

Holden had faced criticism for failing to follow through on campaign promises, a jibe he has responded to by noting the difficult economic and political conditions he faced while in office. He has also maintained that his opponents in the Senate have failed to negotiate with him.

Guarantee of new governor indicates potential policy changes

With the incumbent out of the race and a new governor being elected on Nov. 2, Missourians can count on a change of approach from their state’s highest office. Although candidate McCaskill is also a Democrat, she has indicated that her political agenda will differ from Holden’s. Blunt, as a Republican, presents yet a different political platform.

During the primaries, McCaskill campaigned on a promise of accountability, painting Holden’s attempts to explain his administration’s problems as shirking responsibility. As state auditor, McCaskill’s job was to find and eliminate wasteful bureaucratic spending. Looking to capitalize on her background as state auditor, McCaskill has extended this pledge into her current campaign.

Both Blunt and McCaskill have promised to take different approaches than Holden has on the subject of medical malpractice litigation reform. Republicans in the state Senate have pushed for laws limiting the amount of money that can be awarded in malpractice litigation, but Holden has fought them on the issue and vetoed reform legislation on two occasions. The Senate failed to override his veto both times, leaving the issue a matter of heated contention.

Blunt has also indicated that, if elected, he would sign legislation similar to that vetoed by Holden, which would limit damages and restrict the plaintiff’s choice of venue. As the law currently reads, claimants may file suit in any of a number of jurisdictions, and some prosecutors “shop” for the one in which they expect to find the most sympathetic jury.

Both Blunt and McCaskill also support a filtering system that would reduce the number of frivolous claims, a burden that bogs down the courts and causes doctors’ malpractice insurance rates to rise.

Earlier this month, 300 copies of a new student-run newspaper, the “WUnderground,” were printed and distributed on main campus.

The paper was inspired by the void of “parody and satire papers” on campus, according to Lee Dunfield, editor in chief of the newspaper. Dunfield hopes that WUnderground will bring comedic relief from other more “serious” publications.

“Especially after reading the Student Life April Fool’s edition, we just thought we could do better,” joked Commander in Chief Sam Stribling.

The first issue, which was paid for “out of pocket,” has helped WUnderground earn funding as a class-three group with the Student Group Activities Committee. A new edition will be published every month and distributed at Mallinckrodt Center and the underpass.

As of now, in addition to the three “chiefs,” Editor in Chief (Dunfield), Commander in Chief (Stribling) and Savage Indian Chief (Tomer Cohen), the paper has approximately ten contributing writers. However, they are in need of layout editors and photographers.

“[We] need as many people as we can get to give us ideas and articles,” said Dunfield. The paper is open to articles that are “good quality and not offensive…well, to a point,” and on “anything that anyone wants to comment on about the University.” Dunfield said articles “just have to be funny, basically.”

Currently the paper focuses on school related topics. The first issue addressed a variety of subjects from the school’s dropping in the U.S News & World Report’s rankings to the layout of the Loop (in an article entitled, “Freshmen Still Looking for Turnaround in Loop”).

Dunfield hopes to eventually expand the newspaper to include different sections, such as one to cover international and another to cover national issues.

“People want to write for us because they’re frustrated with things,” said Dunfield, who enjoys editing and writing the paper. “It’s fun to do and I know people like to read it.”

Nearly a year ago, 36 Nicaraguan grounds maintenance employees were unexpectedly terminated by their Washington University-contracted employer, G&G Building Services, and deported to their home country under the belief that they would be quickly rehired in another capacity. However, they have yet to receive such a call.

The Student Worker Alliance rallied extensively last year to bring the Nicaraguans back. In response to an April rally on the steps of Brookings that attracted over 200 protestors and a petition letter signed by four University professors, among other efforts, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton commissioned a task force to investigate the welfare of campus laborers and, more specifically, review the University’s outsourcing policy.

Ann Prenatt, vice chancellor for human resources and the task force’s chair, said the purpose of the group was to bring together the “students, faculty and staff responsible for administrating contracts to discuss the formulation of our policies and procedures with respect to contractors.”

The task force-which included then-SWA President Sergio Salmeron, then-Student Union Vice President Kenneth Edwards, and faculty and staff “representing those major areas that had major involvement with contractors,” according to Prenatt-delivered its recommendation in May, over a month before it’s July 1 deadline.

Wrighton recently gave a statement to senior Danielle Christmas, a member of the SWA steering committee, which stated he has “discussed the report with the University council on two occasions this summer and [is] now ready to formalize the University policies and procedures.”

The Chancellor added that he hopes to have them “drafted for distribution” by the end of this month.

The Nicaraguans originally entered the United States on ten-month work visas, which were voided when they lost their jobs. When asked recently why the G&G contract was terminated, Manager of Maintenance Operations William Wiley declined to comment. Throughout the ordeal, other administrators have consistently offered the same response.

Despite the termination of their employment contracts, the workers left the University in good spirits. The G&G contract was assumed by Top Care Lawn Services, a St. Louis-based groundskeeping provider that expressed a significant interest in rehiring the workers.

“As far as we know, Top Care has already begun the process of facilitating the workers’ return,” Salmeron told Student Life at the time of the deportation.

Hopeful that they would return by early 2004, the 36 Nicaraguans boarded planes to Central America, awaiting the message from either the University or Top Care calling them back to work in the United States.

Next month is the one-year anniversary of their forced departure.

“We weren’t able to get the 36 Nicaraguan workers back into the country,” said senior Janine Brito, arts and event planning head for SWA. “At this point, it may be too late to bring them back.”

According to Mimi Hendrix, a church employee who befriended the workers during their time in St. Louis, 10 Nicaraguans were eventually hired for work at the University, although none of these 10 workers had been a part of the original group of 36 deported workers.

Ironically, Brito said that Top Care recruiters had returned to the same village from which the original 36 were hired, but none of the Nicaraguans formerly employed at the University were chosen to return.

Hendrix also said that the 36 workers had been so confident of their return that they made down payments toward apartments in the area, which have since been forfeited.

In the haste and circumstances surrounding their departure, many of the Nicaraguans also left winter items-heavy jackets, gloves and caps-in the care of their landlord. Hendrix said that when one of the 10 new Nicaraguans went to claim them in early September, the items were missing.

“The landlord was supposed to watch their stuff and he obviously did not,” said Hendrix.

SWA begins new campaign

While the SWA waits to receive drafts of the formalized University policies and procedures the Chancellor has promised, they plan to forge ahead with other campaigns. This year, they are planning an aggressive “Boot the Bell” campaign aimed at removing the Taco Bell franchise from Mallinckrodt Center.

Brito explained that Taco Bell orders its tomatoes from a company that employs immigrant farm workers in southwest Florida. These workers are not paid by the hour, but rather by the weight of the tomatoes that they harvest.

“The workers are paid $50…for every two tons of tomatoes,” said Brito. “We’re putting pressure on Taco Bell to give workers a one-cent raise per pound.”

Dining Services General Manager Kathy Carmody seemed ambivalent about the possibility that Taco Bell might be chased off campus.

“Our contract with Taco Bell is up next year,” said Carmody. “We’re open to whatever students bring to the table. We’d just as soon do another concept that students want to see.”

Carmody said the workers at Mallinckrodt’s Taco Bell are actually Bon App‚tit employees. In the event of the franchise’s closure, they would simply move to another unit on campus or work in the replacement franchise.

The kid gloves came off this weekend as the formerly tight-lipped Commission on Presidential Debates made its frustration public by pointing a finger at the Bush camp for putting the debates in jeopardy.

After a meeting last Friday, the Commission officially concluded that only President Bush and Senator Kerry qualified to participate in the presidential debates. Ralph Nader, with only five points in opinion polls, did not meet the 15 percent threshold required by the Commission. But the CPD still has not confirmed the upcoming debates.

The candidates are scheduled to debate foreign policy this Thursday at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL, but ongoing negotiations have thrown the plan into confusion. The CPD has refused to sign off on the 32-page ‘memorandum of understanding’ conceived by joint advisers to the Bush and Kerry campaigns. Instead of agreeing to the document, which has been criticized as restricting the open forum the debates should foster, the Commission offered a compromise.

In an open letter to the campaigns on Sept. 25, the CPD tried appeasement of what many see as political maneuvering by the Bush team.

“We will make every good faith effort to accommodate those terms,” wrote the Commission in reference to the list of stipulations, which range from time limits on rebuttals to restrictions on town-hall participants’ questions. “If departure from the terms becomes necessary, we certainly will confer with the appropriate campaign representatives.”

The Commission also danced around the campaigns’ proposal that “soft” Bush and Kerry supporters replace the “undecided” voters originally slotted to question candidates in the Oct. 8 town-hall debate at Washington University.

“We are confident that once the campaigns’ representatives have had an opportunity to discuss participant selection methodology” with the Gallup organization-in charge of selecting voters for the town-hall-“the open issues, if any, will be resolved satisfactorily,” wrote the CPD.

Bush advisers are having none of it. The president’s team is demanding the Commission take a stronger stance on the memorandum-while Thursday’s debate hangs in the balance.

Bush-Cheney spokesman Sharon Castillo refused to confirm last week that the majority of the restrictions on the memorandum came from top Bush advisers.

“Both campaigns had negotiating teams and those teams went through their wish lists,” said Castillo. “Both sides agree on the fundamentals.”

The CPD took the squabble to the press in an attempt to pressure the Bush team into agreement. A spokesman for the Commission put the blame squarely in the president’s court.

“If they don’t want to debate, that’s fine. They can tell the world why they don’t want to debate,” the official told ABC News. “If they decide to pull out, it’s on them.”

And a recent TIME magazine poll could make the president think twice about a cancellation. In a race where every vote counts, 19 percent of voters said the debates could be a deciding factor in their decision on Nov. 2.

49 percent plan to watch at least some of the debates, and 69 percent of “moveable” voters-those who are undecided or might change their minds-say they could make up their minds based on the debates.

Despite the controversy, both candidates are furiously preparing for the all-important weeks to come-Kerry holed up with advisers in the swing state of Wisconsin and Bush on his ranch in Crawford, TX. Each will practice sparring with a stand-in for his opponent.

As the candidates review political policies and fine-tune snappy one-liners, spokespeople for each side are trying to raise expectations-for the competitor.

“Senator Kerry knows that he has to really prepare well and that George Bush is a talented debater,” said Kerry spokesman Michael Golden. “So he is not taking this lightly.”

Spokesmen for Bush have widely referred to Senator Kerry as a modern-day Cicero, while the Kerry team claims the president has never lost a debate in his life. Bush benefited from low expectations going into the 2000 debate cycle, after which many voters considered the Republican candidate a winner in the debates.

Meanwhile, preparations for the four debates are well underway. Host universities are continuing with scheduled plans, and the news media have released programming information for the debates.

After the first debate in Florida this Thursday, the next presidential debate is schedule for Oct. 8 at Washington University. The third debate is set for Oct. 13 at Arizona State University, and the vice-presidential candidates will debate on Oct. 5 at Case Western Reserve University.

Margaret Bauer

A new nonpartisan coalition has formed amid concerns that student voter registration cards are taking too long to be processed. The student group, WU Voice Your Vote Coalition, hopes to coordinate voter registration efforts on campus in the last ten days before the national Oct. 6 registration deadline.

Typically a person receives confirmation of their registration within two weeks, but students like senior Becca Gross have waited much longer. Gross switched her registration from Maryland to Missouri in late August through Rock the Vote.

“I don’t believe I’ve received anything by mail,” said Gross. “I’m a little nervous that my name won’t be registered in Missouri come election day.”

Senior Yvonne Carillo experienced similar delays.

“I registered through that Wash U group [Project Democracy] that was tabling at freshmen move-in,” said Carillo. “I haven’t gotten confirmation yet.”

Seniors Ojiugo Uzoma and Danielle Christmas want to know what causes this lag between filling out registration forms and receiving confirmation in the mail. The two co-founded the WU Voice Your Vote Coalition and are joint campus representatives for the Electoral Action Project, which is part of the national student group United States Student Association (USSA).

“We are not understanding why people are registering to vote and not being actively registered,” said Christmas. “That just suggests a bigger issue.”

Uzoma said the coalition hopes to “bring some kind of unity to the voter registration that is happening right now,” but also plans to stay active after registration deadlines pass, advocating continual student involvement in local and national politics.

Last Friday, the WU Voice Your Vote Coalition advertised their group’s first meeting with an e-mail making statements about other voter registration drives, which were quickly retracted.

In the e-mail, they suggested a national organization that has been registering voters on campus, America Coming Together (ACT), might be “neglecting to turn in their registrations to election authorities.” They also wrote that “there has also been speculation that some partisan groups on campus are disposing of voter registrations that do not identify with their respective partisan causes.”

WU Vote Coalition sent out a second e-mail later that same day, retracting and apologizing for their statements about ACT and voicing new concerns that inefficiencies in the St. Louis County Board of Elections may be causing the delays.

According to David Jay, ACT coordinator for all St. Louis universities, the original suspicions voiced by WU Voice Your Vote stemmed from an incident at University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) where an ACT campus volunteer forgot his clipboard on a lunch table and had it picked up by the UMSL cleaning staff.

Jay said the clipboard held only voter pledge cards, which are different from voter registration cards. Pledge cards are signed promises to vote on Election Day.

Christmas declined to say where WU Voice Your Vote heard their original information about ACT or what specifically they heard.

“I can’t speak for Ojiugo but I feel like our urgency led us to look for quick answers,” said Christmas. “And now we’re finding the difficult involved answers and that’s what our vote coalition needs to do.”

Both Jay and the women of WU Voice Your Vote said back-ups in the St. Louis County Board of Elections could be contributing to delays.

“I’ve talked to people every day who say, ‘I registered a month ago and haven’t received anything in the mail,'” Jay said. “The election board has been really bad about sending out the confirmation.”

Judy Taylor, director of elections at the St. Louis Board of Elections, said that her office just recently recovered from a surplus of cards received around the August elections.

“There was a backlog after the election and it probably went into the first part of last week,” Taylor said.

Delays also could happen due to new registration cards being entered before older ones, she explained.

“It could be maybe that when our clerks are putting them in the tray, the new ones are being put in the front and the back ones are staying in the back.”

According to Taylor, the office currently has 4,000 registration cards, which haven’t been entered but will be by Tuesday. She also said that student organizations often hold their cards for awhile before turning them in, although she remarked that ACT “has been coming in regularly.”

Senior Josh Gantz, campus coordinator for Rock the Vote, agrees that the St. Louis County Board of Registration is swamped.

“They are obviously really, really backed up,” said Gantz. “They get tons and tons of registrations every day.”

However, Gantz believes delays, and not conspiracies within any organization, are the extent of the problem.

“The problem is just the lag,” he said. “I can only speak for the [registration cards] that get turned into Rock the Vote and Project Democracy, but the people we’ve been registering will be registered.”

Gantz said confirmation may take longer than two weeks because of the time it takes to process cards both within campus groups and at the St. Louis County Board of Elections. Rock the Vote and University group Project Democracy photocopy all registration cards before handing them over to the Board of Elections, said Gantz. These groups also hand in registrations in stacks, meaning some cards may stay in their hands longer than others.

“A lot of the guys in the house or my friends have come up to me and said ‘I haven’t gotten my [confirmation] card yet,'” he said. “We are turning [registration cards] in but just a lot slower than we would hope,” Gantz said

Regardless of who is to blame for the delays, Uzoma and Christmas hope that students will feel these issues are important enough to support their efforts to unite the voter registration groups on campus.

WU Voice Your Vote Coalition will hold its first meeting tonight at 9 p.m. by the green chairs in Mallinckrodt.

Students can check to see if they are registered by calling the St. Louis County Election Board, general number (314) 615-1800. Judy Taylor recommends Democrats call Deputy Director Debbie Quicke at (314) 615-1852 and Republicans call Deputy Director Charlene LaRosa at (314) 615-1853.