I have been holding off writing this letter for some time because I wanted to wait until student elections were over.

I begin by congratulating Students United For Change (SUFC) on a very positive and well-run campaign and on their crushing victory over the independent candidates. Rob Grover won by a margin of over 2 to 1 against Carlo Albano, and all but one of the SUFC Senate candidates won.

This is certainly a mandate and a reaction to the extreme leftist Milwaukee Panther Party (MPP), reactionaries whose entire campaign consisted of bongo drums, slanderous posters, stolen condoms and unsubstantiated claims of and allusions to corruption.

As is often the case when radical elements have no evidence of wrongdoing, no ideas of their own and are being pushed into a corner through calmly delivered logic and reason, they lash out in whatever uncontrolled manner that they are able to.

As was apparent last week during the election, the MPP decided on innuendo, name-calling and war drums. In blatant violations of election law here at UWM, the MPP and the Black Student Union attacked not only SUFC in general, but some of its members personally (and even their significant others who had nothing to do with the party or its campaign).

I myself was called a “disenfranchiser” and a “racist.” Yet the SUFC, being the clean-cut and down-to-earth people that we are, did not respond with equally dirty tactics. We just stuck to our campaign and used our heads.

The MPP filed almost a dozen election complaints against us, all of which were either dismissed by the Independent Elections Commissioner or the University Student Court. SUFC did not file a single complaint, although we certainly had grounds. What would have been the point?

There were too many ridiculous claims leveled against us to list them all here. However, I did mention being called a racist and so I will address that accusation because it is such a hot-button issue. One particularly awful protest sign read “Ask SUFC why there is no person of color on their ticket.”

About 28 percent of SUFC’s candidates for SA Senate were minority students. Some are American citizens and some are not, but all are highly involved students with a variety of views. Not one single candidate for MPP was a “person of color.”

When I pointed this out to the MPP member in question, I was told that she could not “see the color” in our party and that I was a “hater” who was only trying to spin things. (It is an interesting fact that this same individual was twice removed from Sandburg Hall by security for unruly behavior and once referred to the police as “po-po’s”).

I fail to see how showing that an accusation as false is being a “hater” or “spinning the facts.” This incident, only one of many, illustrates perfectly the unreasonableness of our opposition in the election and the completely paranoid delusions that they have convinced themselves are true. I was extremely relieved to see that the vast majority of UWM students were not fooled by these wildly delusional claims.

I will end this article by noting that Students United For Change is not just a cheesy name that we dreamed up because we needed a party tag. All of us were disgusted by the corruption and ineffectiveness of the previous administration and we honestly do want to clean government up.

The fact that we take showers, are tough on spending, actually go to class and don’t campaign by beating on drums does not make us any less concerned about the state of student government. It makes us mainstream students who have lives and jobs outside of SA and, therefore, we are able to relate to the real world and come-up with creative, real world solutions to problems that students face.

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