While surveying the worthy candidates for student trustee for Cornell, it occurred to me that I liked power, attention, and corruption, and that none of these candidates had my degree of ruthlessness, blind ambition, and utter lack of bureaucratic experience. In defense of the two-party system, which according to the Constitution I never bothered to read holds that the qualified must compete on equal grounds with the incompetent, I declare my candidacy for BOTH seats. Why both? I'm a firm believer in the strongman system of decisionmaking, and though I can't bench press a ferret, I do believe I have what it takes to make quick decisions. After all, marching somewhere, even in the wrong direction, is preferable to standing still.
As a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy, I am uniquely placed to represent both the paranoia of unemployability among the humanities as well as the pretentious scorn of the hard sciences. Not only do I represent them, I embody them - I am a short asian male (SAM, soon to replace WASP as the acronym embodying the loathsome characteristics attributed to "the system"). I hate people, like gadgets, and can't figure out the difference between MySQL, IDL and hair gel. (Neither works on my computer right now.)
Most other fields are peopled by academics who believe the world revolves around them and their work - we have Lagrangians, pages of illegible algebra, and obscenely expensive instruments that prove it. Not just a THEORY, but a FACT. My field covers the known universe, and I've got the ego to match - and will feel completely comfortable making claims and taking positions beyond the limits of the known universes of time, space, plausibility, ethics, and, most of all, my competence.
My humble background - middle class, attending lower-class public schools, attending higher-class higher educational institutions, and ultimately destined for mediocrity - somehow qualifies me to represent the interests of the poor and underprivileged. To be honest - a vice I try to avoid whenever possible - I will most likely campaign on a lot of promises of equality and justice, only to sell out in the end because being poor and underprivileged sucks and leads to nasty personality complexes.
Remember the attempt at unionization that was torpedoed by the reactionary greed of scientists/engineers? Expect more of the same, except even more exploitation of you, as we take out our angst by lording over our slight edge in employability. I will also take whatever steps necessary to facilitate the encroachment of the military-academic-industrial-congressional-Geraldo complex into the "free" university.*
Ultimately, you should vote for me not because you adhere to high-minded principles, or even because you want someone to deliver the pork (though it is true that I will, if elected, host a gigantic Hawai'ian barbeque with traditional Kalua pig roasted over radioactive by-products from the cyclotron.) You should vote for me if you've been eyeing those sweet 30-inch Mac monitors in the Mars lab and want someone to create just enough chaos in the establishment through erratic and impolitic speeches to give you the cover to loot to your hearts content. I campaign on this plank, and a promise to eliminate all ugly people from the campus.
So vote for me, or I'll personally kick you where the sun don't shine (which, in Ithaca, means everywhere).
Ryan "Tricky Dick Nixon" Yamada
* If you think $40k a year is a "free university", you're obviously have too much money burdening your mind. I recommend a prompt marriage to me and a rapid divorce, after which I will use my winnings to buy Mike Tyson's impounded bling.
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