4/7     What do all these political parties at Cal stand for?
        So many parties: CalSERVE, some apple thing. getting confused.
        \_ aPPLE is an offshoot of Student Action, they split off because
           SA is putting up some guy nobody knows for President and they
           (aPPLE) doesn't feel he's paid his dues, and they also think
           that they picked him because he's an asian guy, and they think
           they can cause the 'Cal Asian Community' to vote in a block for
           him because he's president of one of the asian clubs.  To me,
           that seems as logical as them recruiting dans to run for ASUC
           President, and expecting all the techies to vote in a block for
           him.  As for what they stand for, Student Action is more campus
           spirit, money for student groups, etc.  while CalSERVE is more
           focused on minority issues.  That's what I've gleened anyways.
           In practice, they are all pretty much the same, and are at their
           best when they find something cool to throw their weight and money
           behind, like the new OCF computer lab. -jones
                \_ hey Devin, you should manipulate some party to say that
                   if they'll massively fund OCF and CSUA, it might encourage
                   its members to vote for them.
        \_ Different baffled facial expressions when you psychologically
           terrorize them during elections.  Gordie Mohr, where are you? -John
        \_ Like Devin said, they're all pretty much the same.  He neglected
           to mention that useful and cool projects that they throw their
           weight and money into are by far the exception.  Most of their
           time is spent in petty squabbles over non-issues because the parties
           encourage members to vote in blocks.  The motivation for the block
           voting goes something like this: "Party X is voting for pointless
           issue Y, and we hate party X so let's vote against it, and waste
           days (if not weeks) arguing over the issue." Examples of stupid
           issues include: should we change Oski or keep him the same, and
           how can we cover our asses from that Spitfire debacle.  When not
           basically wasting your time and funds via petty squabbles, the
           major ASUC political parties waste your time by playing Team
           Fortress on an OCF machine.  A quick rundown of the parties and
           their, generally self-serving interests:
           -Student Action: Probably the biggest behemoth, and easily the most
            politicized (i.e. most full of shit) party.  Devin's description
            is reasonably accurate except they tend to make flawed claims:
            (I don't know whether or not they've actually successfully pushed
            for increased student group funding, ask Herr Jones)
             - being responsible for Heller Lounge being open 24 hours:
               In actuality, this was due to the work of a non-student action
               Senator that quit the ASUC because he got fed up with party
               squabbling.
             - Fighting for 500 more beds in the Underhill Housing project.
               Last I checked, Underhill is still a parking lot.  This claim
               is both meaningless and impossible to substantiate since any
               housing built on Underhill won't be built until everyone
               currently attending Cal has graduated.
             - Registering over 7000 students to vote.  While this is certainly
               a good thing in terms of community service, it offers virtually
               no direct benefit to Berkeley students.  SA doesn't have a
               monopoly on registering students to vote.
           -Apple: As Devin said, a split off of SA.  It was formed by folks
            who were bitter that SA didn't slate them for executive positions.
            Being that Apple is essentially SA 2.0, there isn't much hope for
            them.  Also, they're prone to making bad allegories about changing
            the ASUC the way Apple Computer changed the world.  Listen to one
            of these and you'll see that Apple is very high on the BS-meter.
           -BECS (Berkeley Engineers and Cal Scientists): Note that a number
            of BECS' candidates aren't even in the sciences.  This year BECS
            is campaigning with SA and UNITE.  My guess is that SA is just
            using BECS for overflow since it would look bad if SA was running
            too many candidates.
           -UNITE (It probably doesn't s
           -UNITE (It probably doesn't stand for anything because I don't
            expect the greeks to be clever enough to cook up an acronym): The
            Greek party, also in cahoots with SA.  Probably being used by SA
            for overflow and to draw the Greek vote.  Not surprisingly, the
            Greeks tend to vote as a block.  (Kind of like the borg, only
            dumber, oh yeah, kind of like sheep).
           -CalServe: They tend to focus on minority issues, and make the
            claim that CalServe isn't very visible on campus because its
            members are busy working with their communities outside of
            Berkeley.  While this all very noble, there are two problems with
            it: a) They don't seem to have made much progress getting
            Affirmative Action reinstated. b) If they're spending so much time
            working with their communities off-campus, they're not really
            helping out Berkeley students.
           So that's the lot of them.  My suggestion is that if you want the
           ASUC to get anything useful done (i.e. to get the Suck out of the
           ASUC), don't vote for any members of the established political
           parties.  And don't buy the "We have experience as ASUC officials"
           scam either because when you look at what they actually did while
           gaining "experience", it doesn't amount to very much.
           -dans (Speaking as himself and in no way as an official of the CSUA)