A post-sweep thought

From the April 2 edition of the Ionian, my side of an "Issue of the Issue" debate about which New York baseball team would be better in '09, arguing for the Yankees:

"...You see, in truth, I don’t know all that much about Major League Baseball. I’d describe myself as a “casual fan” at best. I catch a game or two when I can, but I don’t comprehend all the nuances of what I’m watching, nor do I have any grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of individual players or teams as a whole. The only sport I can analyze on that level is basketball. But I do understand the Yankees, specifically, on a metaphysical level.

I’ll never forget the first time I walked into Yankee Stadium while on a summer trip through my high school to the City That Never Sleeps. Chills ran through me as I felt this indescribable but oh-so-real sense of horror and dread. As Red Sox owner John Henry would perhaps have described it, I was just feeling the effects of arriving at the epicenter of the Evil Empire.

The New York Yankees are an entity fueled by all things bad and unholy. And over the course of this offseason, the Yanks fueled up mightily. Between a shameless spending spree by Brian Cashman that could even make a Sox fan blush without fear of hypocrisy and, of course, all of A-Rod’s varied shenanigans, the Yankees might be more genuinely unlikeable than ever before.

Which is exactly why they’ll succeed.

The Bronx Bombers will succeed, to some degree or another, because that’s how these things work. A Yankees club this reprehensible isn’t wasted on the ages by not making the playoffs. But we’ll be rooting against them every step of the way, and we’ll have to root hard..."

October = Return of the Jedi???

Blech.

When I make trips to the grocery store, I've been known to deviate from the shopping list a little and make an impulse purchase from time to time.

Last night at Stop & Shop, my impulse purchase of choice was some Garelick Farms Ultimate Chocolate Lowfat Milk. Which, on the surface, was a solid impulse choice if there ever was one.

I got home from Stop & Shop. I unloaded the groceries from the car. I ate dinner.

After dinner, I decided to indulge. So I twisted the plastic seal off the gallon jug, popped off the cap and poured myself some chocolate milk.

The first sip was atrociously sour.

It didn't occur to me that the milk might be spoiled. What did occur to me instead was that I was drinking from the same glass I had used while eating dinner. Apparently, I thought, some trace amounts of lemonade had mixed in with the milk. Gross. So I dumped the contaminated milk, rinsed out my glass and refilled.

Again, one sip made me recoil in disgust like those babies eating lemons on YouTube (isn't that the weirdest viral video genre ever, by the way?).

This time, I suspected something might be up with the milk itself. Call me Nancy Drew. But instead of sniffing it like a normal person, I took yet another sip - this time straight from the jug, just to ensure that my possibly-still-lemonadey glass wasn't the source of the problem.

It wasn't.

I told my mom I thought I might've somehow bought spoiled milk. She told me to check the expiration date. I did, and it was still two days away. My mom said that she's usually wary of buying milk that close to expiring and to just get rid of it if it didn't taste right.

Alright.

But I hesitated. I debated with myself for a minute. I didn't want to dispose of a whole gallon of perfectly good Ultimate Chocolate Lowfat Milk. Was it really spoiled, or was it just in my head? I wanted, again, to blame the lemonade. I had it in for the lemonade. Maybe it wasn't the glass, but maybe the taste of lemonade was still in my mouth, and the milk just seemed sour as a consequence. But I pushed aside these nagging doubts, grabbed the jug and began to pour its contents into the kitchen sink.

Remorse over my possible wastefulness kicked in as soon as the milk began swirling down the drain - until it stopped swirling about two thirds of the way through the gallon, as the milk started pouring in a thick, lumpy sludge. I gagged.

That milk was Bad with a capital "B."

Blech.

Relaunch x2!

More breaking news:

The short-lived experiment that was Inside the Mind of the Editor-in-Chief (at right) is now officially over in favor of the return of D Tram's Awesome Blog.

I'm excited. You should be too, I think.

How to improve SGA elections: thoughts?

In the April 2 Ionian, we ran the following editorial...

Alexander Wickers won the race for the presidency of the Iona College Student Government Association handily. Facing three other extremely worthy candidates, each of whom ran impressive campaigns, Wickers still managed to haul in 237 votes – a full 60 votes more than the closest runner-up, Jesse Ladoue.

But, according to protocol established in the SGA constitution, that margin wasn’t enough. The constitution clearly states that “If no candidate receives 51 percent of the votes, the top two shall be voted on again by the outgoing SGA legislature.”

This singular clause made the SGA elections of 2009 far more complicated than they ever needed to be – so much so that, when her fellow SGA e-board members presented Executive Vice President Ashley Smith with flowers in front of the legislature for her hard work in organizing the elections upon their completion, one had to wonder if a more meaningful gift would have been a simple motion to amend that clumsy, ill-conceived line instead.

First and foremost, it is unnecessary to mandate that an SGA official be elected by a true majority. In years when a position is hotly contested by more than two candidates – like the presidency this year – it would be useful if the constitution acknowledged that a victory as substantial as that of Wickers is, in fact, a clear victory. What, then, a more reasonable requirement for margin of victory might be is certainly up for debate, but insisting on hitting the 51 percent mark at all times seems excessive.

Perhaps more importantly, however, the notion that the vote for an SGA president would eventually fall into the hands of the SGA legislature under any circumstances whatsoever seems strange at best, and utterly ridiculous at worst. What, after all, is the SGA legislature?

The SGA legislature consists mostly of the presidents of all clubs and organizations on campus, as well as a handful of class senators. It’s easy to note that turning to the members of the legislature to vote for a student body president disenfranchises those members of the student body who aren’t involved in on-campus clubs and organizations – but it’s even messier than that. The SGA legislature is not proportionately representative of any segment of the student body, those involved or otherwise. Shifting an election from an open, popular vote over to the legislature disenfranchises everyone, in a sense.

If it is determined that a proper margin of victory has not been attained in an SGA election, a second election must once again include the entire student population – regardless of whether a Nuts & Bolts conference is rapidly approaching or not. Democracy can’t be sacrificed for expediency.

The current SGA constitution was approved by the legislature just last year; the Ionian voted in its favor at the time. The clause in question was clearly overlooked by many. But the magic of our SGA constitution, much like our nation’s, is that it is malleable; we can amend it. And we should.

Assuming no one beats us to it, the Ionian will introduce a motion to amend the constitution’s peculiar stipulations about e-board elections at the April 16 SGA meeting - the first meeting after the college closes for Easter.

...But today's April 16, and, unfortunately, we're not ready to introduce anything. I'd always wanted to solicit lots of different people for thoughts on this issue before putting together an actual amendment, and I haven't yet so... A (figurative) penny for your thoughts?

Then we can put something together to propose on April 23. For realsies this time.