It Is Thursday My Dudes
Happy Thursday...It’s something of a quiet news week but a heavy opinion week, so we’re doing a small news dump, no garbage section this week, and quickly moving to opinion.
This week: Tom Shea on the Astros scandal and yours truly on the Red Sox, Boston College’s undergraduate government, and—unfortunately—NASCAR. News stuff includes an update on the presidential race, ICE in Boston, and skyrocketing rent throughout Massachusetts. Let’s get started...
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In Lieu of The News, Let’s Do Some Thoughtzzz...
Just because nothing is breaking literally right now, that doesn’t mean I don’t have my eye on some developing stories that I’m sure are going to come up over the next few weeks.
1) Nationally, the presidential campaign is taking up the most airtime, followed closely behind by the thousands of people who’ve lost their lives to COVID-19 (the Coronavirus) [Insert a really long sigh here]. If I find interesting stuff out in the world, I’ll include it here. Beyond that, I’ll always post a link and a quick summary of what the FiveThirtyEight forecast is projecting. It’s a morning newsletter, I feel like I’d be letting you down if I didn’t try to keep you updated on what’s happening to some degree.
Along those same lines, let’s toss in some links per Politico’s Playbook: Democrat Super PACs are beginning an ad offensive against Senator Bernie Sanders in South Carolina and Nevada (Nevada’s caucuses are this weekend) … Prior to Wednesday night’s debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s chances of winning the Democratic presidential primary, according to the FiveThirtyEight model, had dipped to 1 percent. The L.A. Times reported Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden had both fallen below the 15 percent threshold in the California primary … FiveThirtyEight has former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s chances at 7 percent, above every candidate but Biden’s chances, and his have been in a downward spiral since his poor performances in the first two primaries: he’s dropped from the mid-forties to 12 percent in about a two week span. It will take time for the impact of Warren’s critically lauded debate performance has on each candidate, and how much of an immediate reaction Nevada will have this weekend during caucuses is completely unclear as of today.
Today is a slightly heavy Donald Trump edition, which I can promise isn’t something I plan on making a staple of this thing because you can find that news literally anywhere else, but his attorney general is considering quitting and his reelection campaign is in full swing at this point, so there’s that.
2) Enough of that: The news cycle in Boston is sputtering at best at the moment—there was an article in The Boston Globe about there being a s—t ton of crows in Lawrence. That followed rumors of new bus lanes in the works, and the most serious story of the week:
The Globe and New York Times released reporting that confirmed the Trump Administration is sending immigration enforcement officers to sanctuary cities around the United States, including Boston, which prompted state officials such as Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins, U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, and Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller to speak out against the move. Both Massachusetts senators—Warren and Ed Markey—spoke out against the move earlier in the week in a letter sent to the Customs and Border Protection Agency, “demanding” agents be withdrawn, according to WBUR. Homeland Security said last Friday that border agents are being deployed in Boston from now through May. The Times report noted cities targeted in this plan include New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco , Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, Detroit, and Newark.
The Boston Herald’s website is so bad that my browser thought someone was trying to hack my computer, so you’ll have to trust me on this one: Erin Tiernan wrote a breakdown on how exactly rents are increasing throughout Massachusetts. The headline is that median rent in Malden—for those of you reading this not from Mass., it’s a real place, go look it up—has risen to just under $1,900 a month, showing that the high rents that plague Cambridge, Boston, and Newton have expanded out farther into the Boston suburbs—Cambridge boasts the highest number at $2,650, followed by Boston at $2,550. Newton’s has risen to $2,050, Revere’s are up to $2,100—matching Somerville’s median price. Tiernan found that even Worcester is feeling the pressure—she also noted a rally last month that was pro-reintroducing rent control showed there is some metro-area support for the measure. It’s quite good stuff, so if you’re willing to pull a lottery ticket on the Herald site for the full breakdown, here you go.
Markey vs. Kennedy is happening, the first debate was last night, but it’s the beginning of a long campaign, we’ll circle back on that (this newsletter is about to get real long). Watch the debate here if you’d like.
3) The list of Boston College stories I’m keeping an eye on is a lot shorter, but these I can assure you I’ll be following-up on in the coming weeks for some more in-depth reporting. They include the University publicly mentioning on multiple occasions now that they’re planning on using current green spaces on lower campus as the spot for a student center, the ongoing sexual assault lawsuit involving an unidentified student-athlete that I broke last summer, and the resurgence of BC men’s hockey in the face of regression from the women’s team, as well as the lacrosse squad.
4) The NFL is redoing their playoff structure and you’re not going to believe this but Adam Schefter has the entire story...wouldn’t be surprised to see a column pop up in this here newsletter about the changes at some point in the next few weeks (hopefully not from me, though).
Enough aggregating, let’s do some other stuff.
SHEA: Is the Astros Cheating Scandal Good or Bad For Baseball?
By Tom Shea — Contributing Writer
If I may compare this offseason to a night out for dinner; normally a couple weeks of free agency is all the respite we get for 6 months, like throwing back some jalapeno poppers just to prevent your date from hearing your stomach growl in anticipation of the main course. But this year, we’ve gotten a whole Golden Corral buffet, both in terms of quantity and quality.
It all comes on the heels of what should’ve been a momentous time for the game. We got the coalescence of a big market champion who was also depraved with the Nats, like the Cubs in 2016 or the Sox in 2004. But just when you could start to say “see, there’s parity, even the Nats can win!”, the Sox turn around and flip a top 5 player in Mookie Betts for a guy whose ceiling might be half of Mookie in Alex Verdugo and a glorified scratch-off ticket in Jeter Downs. Whether John Henry's playing 3D chess to distract the masses from his own team’s cheating scandal—who’s to say.
But I’ll let someone else write that hit piece [Editor’s Note: You’ll find that hit piece quite literally right below this one.]. The matter at hand is, bluntly, a s—tshow on all levels. The optics couldn’t be more scathing. The Astros won 100+ games during each of the 3 years of the cheating window, while they won just 84 the year prior. They tainted a World Series and were a game away from tainting another. They’re sign-stealing using trash cans, maybe even a buzzer. We just need pine tar, steroids and corked bats for full cheating bingo.
As far-fetched as it is to purport, the cheating isn’t even the most heinous part. The ‘Stros’ (and the league’s) subsequent navigation of said firestorm is best described by an episode of Spongebob. Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred saying he would’ve disciplined them “in an ideal world” is like me saying if I applied myself then this piece would be on The Ringer. Manfred’s NFL counterpart, Roger Goodell, is similarly clumsy, but at least when faced with potential cheating with Deflategate he overcorrected rather than deluging the headlines with dodgy platitudes. Manfred's paltry penalty of a couple picks and relative pocket change might not normalize cheating, but it has to make teams wonder if breaking the rules may be worth it if the ’Stros’ punishment is the worst-case scenario.
But, four bumbling paragraphs later, I finally beget the question: Is any publicity truly good publicity? We'll ultimately have a more concrete answer as we await the ratings, but for now the window's Wes-Welker-in-the Super-Bowl open for sundry tin foil hat ruminations. My inkling is that MLB will benefit, like the NBA did with Golden State, from having a villain. Seasons as long as the NBA's and MLB's invariably must be propelled by storylines. They lack the luxury the NFL has of each game bearing enormous weight—yes, even you, Lions-Cardinals tie in September.
Of course, the counter is that the cheating delegitimizes the game, along with the underlying nihilism of "what good is giving it my all if the other guy's not above board?" I’d like to evoke another NBA comparison—this time the Donaghy scandal. Even though it naturally put the thought in everyone's heads that "all the games might be fixed," the NBA was buoyed enough by its core tenet of star power that it survived, and those concerns eventually waned. Major League Baseball has proven that it can't rely on the gregariousness of its players for visibility—I wouldn't be surprised if more people in LA recognize Alex Caruso than Mike Trout. Tarnishing the game at its roots is certainly a roundabout way to gain press, but if it plays, it plays.
It remains to be seen if the MLB will make lemonade. The ’Stros should be on prime time once a week. Every single Yanks-’Stros game should be televised. The league now has a clear cash cow; Houston Asterisks shirts are flying off the shelves. This could be construed as rewarding the behavior, but I see it more as a public flogging than a kibble for an obedient pooch. In lieu of adequate tangible punishment, the league can shame the Astros into contrition by pulling the curtains back at every turn. If Altuve's hitting .230 at the All-Star Break, we should all be witnesses.
Unfortunately, the scandal likely serves as more of a temporary silver bullet than an actual panacea. It'd be a reckless extrapolation to say that this scandal will save baseball. Sans more scrupulous examination of teams' sidelines, nothing really changes once this current Astros team starts to dissipate. But it buys the MLB time as they attempt to appeal to people with less cataracts and more libido. It's still possible that come 2030 we view baseball the way we view polo now. But for now, I'll be watching that vaunted lineup try to remember in real time what it's like to not know a pitch is coming.
Tom Shea, known to his friends as Thomas!, is, admittedly, a bit of a charlatan. He is brilliantly able to conceal his spoiled Steelers and Penguins fandom under the guise that his Pirates anguish makes him relatable to the masses. You can find him on Twitter @TomShea5ft11. No description can prepare you for that experience.
Editor’s note: If you’d like to contribute some writing, under any genre, to A View Off a Ledge, email me at goldmajk@bc.edu.
Opinion: Mookie Betts is Gone, and John Henry’s Legacy is Fair Game For The First Time in 15 Years
The forced departure of the Boston Red Sox’s right field talisman has brought Fenway Sports Group and its chief principal under scrutiny they haven’t faced since Keith Foulke lobbed the ball to first base in 2004.
Tom Shea isn’t the only one writing about the stupid Astros, but I can promise you everyone else is angrier. The first two columns I pulled up on the matter were from Jeff Passan and Michael Baumann—Passan opened his ESPN piece with the strongest lede I’ve read in a while (“Baseball is burning.”) and Baumann’s article for The Ringer compared the scandal to a Pennsylvania fire that went from a trash fire to something that has raged for 58 years, rendering a city uninhabitable. But he is the one pointing out the issue’s biggest winner: the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Sports Group.
FSG’s chairman, John Henry, released a statement after Mookie Betts was traded chalking the most panned Red Sox trade since...well since before I was paying attention (essentially 2002, don’t worry, there are plenty of Red Sox fans who are invoking Babe Ruth, which I won’t do because maybe there was something terrible Tom Yawkey did during his horrific tenure at the top of the franchise that people found more galling that I’m forgetting).
Henry chalked the move up as necessary not just as a way to save tax dollars—I know I’ve been thrilled to suddenly find out this year that baseball has renamed the luxury tax the Competitive Balance Tax because...that is somehow better in a PR sense I guess I don’t know—but as a way to ensure future competition for a fifth (!!) World Series victory in the coming years.
Too bad the fastest path to a World Series appearance is having generationally talented players, otherwise the Red Sox would be in great shape.
Henry said in a follow-up press conference that the Sox couldn’t afford to lose Betts for nothing—let’s circle back to that in a minute.
Look, it sure seems like this move is 100 percent based on John Henry being convinced that Zach Kram’s excellent deep dive for The Ringer on the issue, in which Kram examined why getting out of the tax this year saves the Red Sox so minimally and in such a short term fashion that it’s genuinely unclear how Henry could have possibly reached the conclusion that this move was worth what is essentially the equivalent of $53 million in saved cash, is flat out incorrect.
I don’t think it is. Competitive Balance Tax Penalties become what I will call “theoretically severely punitive” after three years of being in the tax. It’s completely unclear to me how the Red Sox could not have possibly gotten out of the tax without getting rid of Betts. Kram said the Red Sox collected $516 million in revenues during their 2018 title run. They can afford to pay someone to do some accounting work in order to find out where they can find weaknesses in the payroll outside of the massive amount you need to pay top tier, MVP-caliber baseball players.
This is the first time in Henry’s tenure that FSG has looked like anything other than the most successful ownership group outside of the Kraft Group in American sports. FSG’s blemishes include firing Terry Francona because he lost the faith of a terrible locker room in 2014—assuredly a terrible move since Francona is probably the best baseball manager of the last two decades, but managers do not make or break a team in the same way losing the best five-tool baseball player the franchise has had on the books since Manny Ramirez—and signing or trading for a bunch of terrible players (See: Gagné, Renterria, Lugo, Crawford, Gonzalez, Sandoval, etc.).
The good news? Those blemishes are completely smoothed over by the Red Sox’ incredible success in the 2000s, as well as FSG’s ability to spend themselves out of problems when they’ve needed to, which is fueled by the revamped Fenway Park and surrounding area that serves as an incredible cash cow—Red Sox fans have certainly compensated FSG and the Sox themselves for the incredible times we’ve had.
But now all that is thrown into flux. Nobody in Boston in their right mind, which is admittedly not many of us and probably not me, would have complained if the Sox lost Betts in free agency. If he was asking for more than Mike Trout and got it from, say, the Yankees or the Dodgers, we’ve watched Clemens, Damon, Ellsbury, hell we (not me, I wasn’t alive) watched Luis Tiant end up in pinstripes eventually—we’re facing the possibility of losing Tom Brady, the man most emblematic of both the city’s resurgence and constant spell atop the pyramids of various sports and leagues since the turn of the century as well as how spoiled and arrogant we can be, to free agency.
We could’ve taken it. We would’ve afforded FSG the benefit of the doubt. They’d earned it.
Now though…
I think my number one concern is that FSG looks at the financial future of baseball, perhaps thrown into even further flux by our good friends in Houston since even more baseball fans could be on the outs after the second major cheating scandal in 20 years—both of which the Red Sox were involved in and might escape major punishment for (somehow), and sees exactly what it sees in its NASCAR assets.
THAT’S RIGHT, TWO NASCAR MENTIONS IN THE FIRST NEWSLETTER, THIS IS CHAOS.
FSG bought into NASCAR at what I would call literally the worst possible time to buy into NASCAR: 2007.
I respect that John Henry and Tom Werner are geniuses, but my word buying into NASCAR a year before the financial crisis is a decision that has not aged insanely well.
But the smart parts of why FSG got involved are absolutely apparent. Even now, 13 years later, the Daytona 500 still hits eight figures in terms of viewers most years. When FSG bought in, the sport was descending from its hottest point in its history, still smelling the fumes of the super-duper stars like the late Dale Earnhardt and building upon a new generation made up of Jeff Gordon, Earnhardt’s son, and Jimmie Johnson—who when FSG bought in was in the middle of a championship run that retroactively cemented him clearly as either the best or second-best racer to ever compete in NASCAR’s premier series depending on how you feel about Richard Petty beating up on severely inferior or part-time competition for thirty years.
FSG bought a 50 percent stake in Jack Roush’s race team—Roush is a NASCAR legend himself and back then his team was the best team to use Ford engines (his team has since been surpassed by Stewart-Haas Racing) in 2007. After the financial crisis, corporations weren’t as excited to splash their names all over race cars that cost companies $25 million in order to compete for titles.
Suddenly, FSG weren’t holding on to an asset experiencing tremendous growth like the Red Sox were or Liverpool FC are now, but instead Roush Fenway Racing has been stagnant both in terms of competitiveness and financial growth ever since signature superstar Carl Edwards left the team in 2014 at the same time Nationwide Insurance stopped sponsoring one of Roush’s cars to throw its lot in with Dale Earnhardt Jr., the most popular driver in the garage competing with a much more successful team in Hendrick Motorsports, whose stable also included Gordon and Johnson.
FSG has never sold out—in fact, after down years in the middle of last decade, they appeared to reinvest and work harder alongside Roush to make sure the cars returned to competitiveness and contend for the playoffs every year.
But that is all Roush Fenway is: a borderline playoff contender year to year.
If you had asked me if I ever thought the Red Sox could dip to that level before 2019, I would’ve told you Henry, an avid baseball fan, would never let that happen.
Now, I’m not so sure. I’m not sure whether I should thank the Astros for taking the spotlight off the under investigation, interim-manager-having, Mookie Betts-less, reeling Boston Red Sox or if I should be cursing the Astros for believing they could get away with a massive sign-stealing operation (thank you Alex Cora!), and that when they were caught they just went out and pissed everyone off even more.
If this puts a nail in the coffin of baseball as America’s national pastime and it continues to recede from the public zeitgeist, it could cost Boston the remarkable year-over-year success of its most famous team if FSG decides its assets would be better used by pouring them into the international market, where Liverpool is reestablishing itself as a contender not just for the Premier League Title or the Champions League, but as a potential global presence along the same plane that only Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, and perhaps a couple Italian teams currently reside in. Hundreds of millions of fans and billions of dollars in potential revenues I’m sure sounds really good to them.
Whom am I kidding...f—k the Astros.
Opinion: UGBC’s Election Debacle Emblematic of Why The Governing Body’s Time is Up
Look, when you swing an election decision by fining someone for getting endorsed by a podcast and then claim afterward you can’t consider any other election violations when it’s public info that the winning team committed more, YOU HAVE TO DO IT…
When I was news editor for The Heights, I really only had positive interactions with the Undergraduate Government of Boston College. My understanding is that among the general BC populace, both the 2018-19 president Reed Piercey and the 2019-20 president Michael Osaghae were/are highly respected by the vast majority of the student populace. I had no negative interactions with any senator, or the two vice presidents, and Piercey predecessor Akosua Achampong was also highly regarded.
And yet I’ve lost faith.
That’s not to say this is all UGBC’s fault, but I think the organization should be laid to rest after these last two years have proven UGBC doesn’t create change on campus, despite being held in a theoretically higher regard by administrators who will meet with UGBC leadership to discuss the most difficult topics and issues facing members of the BC community—from racism to...late night.
But here is what I can see UGBC has had an impact on: Lean on Me, the text message support hotline BC students can now use for aid with mental health struggles, originated when Piercey, as a senator, wrote the proposal and the senate passed the resolution creating the program in April 2017. The program has been a real success since it was launched at the very end of Piercey’s presidential term in 2019.
DiviersityEdu was a direct reaction to the racist incidents that occurred on campus in October 2017 that led to the massive Silence is Still Violence protest. Its implementation and release at the beginning of the 2018-19 academic year was either panned or mocked—the kindest words anyone offered about the initial iteration of the education module was that the administration had made an effort and listened to students in the process of rolling the module out, and continued to listen in the wake of the less than warm reception for the final product.
And that. Is. The. List.
It’s hard to tell because UGBC records only became extremely easy to access this year when they moved their website onto BC’s domain—they’ve passed three resolutions so far this year—but I’m reasonably certain that UGBC has not passed 10 resolutions since Piercey took office in 2018. Most notably, the most important resolution passed during that time—the emergency resolution that emerged from the senate after Michael Sorkin defaced a dorm with racial epithets and wrote out threats to the black community before denigrating Jewish people to the officers watching over him after his arrest—advocated for University administrators to take illegal action and immediately dismiss Sorkin without regard for his due process rights.
Vice President of Student Affairs Joy Moore, then only in that position on an interim basis before she was promoted the following summer, responded by wholly dismissing almost the entire resolution piece by piece in a letter addressed to UGBC sent the following month.
Only a single piece of the resolution—that the University consider launching a “series of conferences on issues regarding race, gender, class, sexuality, inequality, and inclusion”—was accepted by the administration. The other suggestions, demands, or just aspects of the resolution were either summarily dismissed or asked for BC administrators to begin doing things BC administrators were already doing, such as attempting to diversify the faculty and student body.
You may want to take issue with the University so severely rejecting the supposed voice of the people’s requests, but we’ll never know how open to working on ideas presented in a resolution BC would have been because the resolution was illegal, repetitive, and uninformed in almost every way.
It was certainly a learning moment—senators and UGBC leadership were under the gun during exam weeks while in pain from the actions Sorkin had taken. It’s not impossible to understand why that legislation, drafted by people who it’s safe to assume the vast majority of which were under the age of 22 at the time, would have some issues. It was the basic lack of education and understanding of the situation and what could be recommended that was so galling to me at the time. The text of that resolution contrasted starkly with the level of dialogue that took place a month later when administrators held an open forum and students weren’t joking around, taking administrators on stage to task on a wide variety of issues that have plagued the University community for years.
The bad news is not all of those students are on UGBC, and all of those students stopped going to the biggest victory UGBC scored out of the entire set of demands/suggestions/whatever you want to call has been sent to the BC administrators the last two times there was a racist incident on campus. Smaller community meetings began in the winter last year where students could directly ask administrators about issues facing the community—from members of the Provost’s office to admissions, to counseling services to dining services administrators, with each passing meeting, my understanding is that attendance dwindled further and further. Without the pressing need for change staring BC students in the face via racist graffiti on Black Lives Matter signs in 2017 or all across Welch Hall a little over a year later, the urgency for needing to hold administrators accountable has disappeared from the minds of the student body.
But one line from Moore’s response to the UGBC resolution about Sorkin stands out now more than ever: “In closing, [the BC administration] would like to point out that the recommendations of the UGBC Student Assembly speak only to what administrators and University leaders should do,” Moore wrote. “Sustained progress will require the commitment of all University community members working in good faith towards a common goal. It is the hope of University leadership that students will identify ways in which they can help ensure that all students act responsibly, and with care and respect for one another.”
I remember thinking that was a tone deaf response when the letter came out. This resolution wasn’t about what we needed to do as students, it was supposed to be what we needed from the powers above, which was not a lecture about self-policing.
It turns out that paragraph was positively prophetic, and that I am stupid.
Since that resolution was passed, UGBC has not passed a single resolution calling for student unity on...anything. Two of the resolutions are mostly UGBC rehashing old arguments they’ve hit on in the past about gender-inclusive bathrooms and Eagle Escort coming up short.
Here’s the thing: Let’s say I’m wrong, that resolutions are wicked difficult, and that I should relax. I have good news for you: UGBC can’t even get elections right.
The Elections Committee that serves a watchdog for UGBC elections, which is made up of students, has come under fire this week after assessing multiple vote fines to each team running for the highest office in UGBC, but a 25 vote fine to the team of Czar Sepe and Jack Bracher swung the election from being decided in their favor to going to Christian Guma and Kevork Atinizian. That fine was assessed because Sepe and Bracher were endorsed by a podcast. Guma and Atinizian were pulling students aside on election day in front of O’Neill Library to get them to vote, and though unsolicited endorsement or voting requests are barred by the elections code, Guma and Atinizian weren’t found guilty of any wrongdoing on that count—they were deducted 25 votes for other violations. Sepe and Bracher lost an additional 40 votes for other campaign violations.
But perhaps the most shocking aspect of the situation was that the Elections Committee refused to publicly disclose who was actually on the committee, so even though it claims to be an unbiased organization there is no evidence proving that to be the case, and the committee’s inconsistent rulings—including not considering allegations of campaign violations after the polls close—have brought the entire organization under the microscope.
Whose microscope? I’m not even sure at this point. Turnout was up this year to a whopping 32 percent of the student population. That sounds great, but whether Sepe or Guma won the presidency this year, they were going to be elected with less than 1,000 votes casted in their favor. It’s not clear to me if anyone cares about UGBC anymore outside of people who are on UGBC and a very specific, small sect of the BC student population that seems to value the governing body: Despite voter turnout never reaching the 50 percent threshold over the last 10 years, over the last five only this past year’s election has brought turnout back above the 30 percent mark.
Hey, at least tons of votes were wiped out in the final tally to make sure UGBC’s elections process remains in the dark ages, essentially destroying that process or forcing those paying attention to wonder if the turnout increase was solely down to campaign violations—all four teams were fined at least once.
Even when you look closer at what is actually considered “bad” enough in the eyes of the Elections Committee to require punishment is bizarre. The worse, and I mean WORST, thing you can do is campaign “in the presence of alcohol,” which results not only is immediate disqualification, but also I assume a deduction of standing in the eyes of Jesus cause what could possibly be more evil than throwing a party. Notably, sabotaging an opponent’s campaign is not on the same level as the alcohol thing—you only get a vote fine. You have to do that more than once to get disqualified.
That the Elections Committee and its supervisor at OSI clammed up when The Heights asked for comment on this year’s disaster is such an incredible feat of strength in the genre of lack of accountability that I can barely even comprehend how both the committee and the OSI associate director could think that move was anything outside of cowardly. Why are you running an election, why are you overseeing an election, if your work is not subject to any sort of review?
Again, good news: It’s just UGBC, so if a resolution gets passed by the crew that shows up next year under the selectively-watchful eye of the Elections Committee, the committee shouldn’t be worried about having screwed up their only jobs because if precedent is anything to go off, the student assembly will force through something illegal the University won’t do or will rehash some s—t from the middle of last decade.
What UGBC provides is advocacy—the group describes themselves as an advocacy board on its new website. Here’s the thing: Governments don’t advocate, they legislate. You’re not going to believe this, but there isn’t a single thing about UGBC that exists to legislate anything. Maybe that was the case once upon a time, but it certainly isn’t the case now. Based on how resolutions have come out over the past couple years, that’s probably a good thing.
When I left The Heights in September, conversations were consistently taking place between UGBC leadership and administrators. I haven’t heard anything in the months since I left the paper until now to make me feel differently about that, but I don’t see anything changing on campus, so it’s difficult for me to understand why those conversations are deemed critical enough to justify the word “government” in Undergraduate Government of BC. The administration does plenty of their version of focus groups, they should have their thumb on the feelings of the student populace without UGBC barging in after bad stuff happens screaming about how the University is helping students enough and suggesting the same solutions their predecessors had three years ago.
I’m done with even the idea of UGBC. An opaque for no reason elections committee, an inactive governing body that doesn’t govern, I mean I’m open to hearing other solutions, but are these really the people who are actually representing the views of BC students? Nobody votes, nobody cares unless there’s a disaster, it doesn’t feel like anyone is actually paying attention (I mean nobody is going to read this column either which will ironically prove my point pretty effectively).
Delete UGBC and start over. Try to create something with a more humble objective. Maybe if the bar is lower BC students will be up for rising to that occasion. Until then, all anyone will find when they look at UGBC’s history is disappointment and unfulfilled potential. It’s time the University, and ITS STUDENTS, consider how best to get student issues and concerns in front of administrators with the power to enact change that students clearly don’t have unless they can find a way to get 2,500 members of the population together to march once every decade.
I’m just guessing here, but I think there’s enough work to do that the BC community shouldn’t wait for whenever the next march is—whenever the community is in crisis next—to figure out a new normal. By then, it’ll be too late to make a difference and get out ahead of whatever issues are going to plague the BC community next.
And that’s a major, unnecessary, and potentially damaging waste of time.
Opinion: Being a NASCAR Fan is Weird In The First Place—Then This Week Happened
When President Trump shows up, a driver--Ryan Newman--almost dies after constantly saying superspeedway racing was going to get racers killed, and social media goes wild enough that it’s hard not to reconsider the sport’s supposed irrelevance in American culture and my own part in that equation.
Last weekend was genuinely the first critical moment in my time as a NASCAR fan.
I mean, part of the reason I love watching NASCAR so much is the stakes, for me, are crazy low. I’m stressed out because that’s the default setting that I assume higher powers just set me up with when they booted up my software in the mid-90s, so two to three hours of watching competitors drive in a circle is positively therapeutic. The finer details, whether storytelling based or engineering based, I always find fascinating, but you know when that isn’t fascinating?
When Ryan Newman’s car comes across the finish line upside down and, I can’t emphasize this enough, f—king crushed. I’ve seen a lot of crashes—there’s like five every superspeedway race per series it feels like, that’s 20 guaranteed pretty major wrecks just between two tracks. I’ve paid relatively close attention to the safety changes to NASCAR bodies over the last decade in particular, and I thought the sanctioning body had essentially found a way to death-proof their cars.
So I felt like a real dumbass, as I’m sure NASCAR did, when I watched the replay and saw Ryan Newman’s entire car was compromised from a safety perspective because it had already suffered two major hits, using up close to 100 percent of the 6 car’s safety capacities when the car came off the ground slightly before Corey Lajoie’s 32 car smashed into Newman at 190 mph.
It couldn’t have been more clear that Newman was in a glorified metal FedEx package that got rammed directly in the driver’s side door by the equivalent of an entire column of oncoming traffic. As Denny Hamlin celebrated in the infield after perhaps his best superspeedway performance ever, ending in a third Daytona 500 win—which is bananas—after one of the better 500’s I’ve seen, blissfully unaware that the internet had figured out Ryan Newman might be dead in his car a few hundred yards away.
People criticized Hamlin post-race because jumping to conclusions is our new national pastime, but more than any other time I’ve ever watched a NASCAR race I wanted to be Hamlin in that moment—free of the knowledge that Hamlin’s performance will never be remembered the way your average A+ superspeedway effort gets remembered, free of the knowledge his victory may have come at the cost of someone’s life.
Ryan Newman was trending all the sudden, more people were tweeting about him than The Bachelor. More people were tweeting about Hamlin and Lajoie. SportsCenter was still including updates on Newman Wednesday afternoon—it’s the farthest into a week I think I’ve ever seen NASCAR break into the national news cycle.
Despite how worried everyone was that Newman didn’t make it, just two days later, he walked out of the hospital—yeah, walked—hand in hand with his two daughters.
Things will change—the only news that came out during the hour when nobody knew if Newman was my generation’s Dale Earnhardt, the driver who showed us this wasn’t the game or race we thought it was, was that Newman and Lajoie’s cars were being taken to NASCAR’s research and development center—presumably to figure out how the f—k this happened.
But I think for fans, two things became extremely clear after Sunday afternoon and Monday evening’s proceedings came to an end: If you want to watch NASCAR and you aren’t a hardcore Republican (two thumbs pointing at this guy), the politics of the sport are something you have to decide if you want to live with.
I saw fan accounts saying they’re leaving the sport after President Donald Trump visited Daytona International Speedway to give the famous “Start Your Engines” command and lead the field in a couple of parade laps under caution before departing the speedway to attend Stephen Miller’s wedding (genuinely really random). I was shocked because in 2016, it was a truth that was just not discussed much publicly (separation of sports and politics was what I remember the reason being) that then CEO of NASCAR Brian France endorsed Trump for president and had essentially ordered anyone inside his garage to get in line rather than leave the possibility open that the garage could be divided over personal political affiliations.
I was slightly freaked out about it at the time, but I decided I loved NASCAR even if I disagreed with Brian France or certain drivers or fans on the kind of person or politician Trump was and is. In a way, I found it slightly comforting that I could venture outside of my comfort zone and be a fan of a sport that didn’t follow the same norms I was used to, even if I cling to those norms on a daily basis as something of the basis of whatever moral high ground I’ve tried to stake claim to over the years. NASCAR still does an invocation before each race—if there’s a God, it may not hate me but I assume it would have an insane amount of questions.
“You only prayed to me when you were playing youth baseball? That’s when you thought you needed my help? Your lung collapsed you idiot what is wrong with you? Go to Hell I can’t even look at you man.”
It was obviously different seeing Donald on pit road, knowing that by supporting NASCAR, and thus watching the countless advertisements on cars, firesuits, and taking up long-ass commercial breaks that I was saying “It’s okay for you, sponsors x, y, and z to be even tangentially associated with a president I disagree with fundamentally on...a lot of stuff.”
It’s easy to see why people weren’t in for that, Trump’s policies barely affect me—an idiot with a newsletter. His presence I’m sure hit closer to home with people whose futures could be in the balance, dependent on Trump not giving into a whim he expressed on Twitter or something.
But after having that entire philosophical conversation with myself Sunday afternoon while Donald and Melania stood on the frontstretch addressing the sold out Florida crowd, by Monday night I was sitting, staring at my television with my hands on my head looking like a complete idiot, feeling like I’d betrayed humanity by cheering the end of a great race while a man’s life hung in the balance as he crossed the finish line, somehow in ninth place, sparks flying out from his completely f—ked racecar.
After that I was genuinely glad when Ryan Newman got in the car, he had gotten to see the President showing a sport that is considered either not a sport or a sport enjoyed by the absolute heathens of this country is actually something that deserves some respect.
I don’t think many people cared either way. I don’t think that how I feel about the Donald or politics in general’s relation to sport worldwide really matters—when Ryan Newman was trying, and failing, to keep his car from turning right directly into a wall at 200 mph, I don’t think he was thinking “Thank God I saw President Donald Trump yesterday, that makes this bananas moment totally worth it.”
It was probably more just a prolonged expletive. I know my entire train of thought has sort of just been one prolonged expletive since Newman’s crash and Hamlin’s victory, so I hope he had a moment before he crashed to also swear because I think it’s quite a therapeutic activity.
But Newman will be back, perhaps in a few weeks if he’s already walking out of the hospital with his children. I’ll keep watching NASCAR and keep anticipating superspeedway races the way I assume most people anticipate their birthday. But it won’t be the same for a while until things change, until NASCAR proves it’s safer again, until Ryan Newman—who constantly spoke out against the inherent danger of superspeedway racing right up until he got into the car Monday afternoon—has a microphone in front of his face and he says “I think NASCAR has figured out how to make superspeedway racing safe enough that what happened to me never happens again.”
Until then, I’ll just tune in every week feeling like an idiot, wondering if this is the week one of my heroes doesn’t get to walk out of the hospital. It’s a scary feeling. Makes my stress over whether or not it was okay that President Trump was at Daytona last weekend was okay, because at 10:12 p.m. Monday night, the two of us were both doing the same thing.