By Jesse Showalter and Robert Horning
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 20, 1998

The "pandering demogogues" of ASUA

To the editor:

It was with great outrage and much derisive laughter that we read David J. Cieslak's Apr. 16 article ("CatCard resolution delayed by ASUA Senate") , reporting the Associated Students Senate's timid debate regarding their meaningless and insulting intention of denouncing the CatCard affair.

When will the students pause from their busy lives of consumption to recognize the ASUA charade?

It is high time that the entire UA populace realize that the ASUA and the ASUA Senate are essentially ideological state apparatuses, whose sole function is the promotion of the false consciousness that assures the continued triumph of the culture and pleasure industries.

Of course the university is inextricably bound to business interests through a web of secret and nefarious, almost unspeakable relations. But these venal relationships are perhaps best exemplified by the ASUA's own sponsorship of the consumer re-education initiatives, euphemistically deemed "fairs," where the various vendors of the culture and pleasure industries (i.e. Sprint, Time Warner, Visa, Pepsico, etc., etc.) hawk their wares. These dark carnivals would permanently install that old, shop-worn dream, the instant gratification of non-existent needs, by distributing small, worthless "free" samples to students in exchange for the personal information that demarcates their identity (e.g. their socio-economic position and its ersatz aesthetic, by which they may be represented in focus groups, those star chambers of our late capitalist moment). In return for their facilitation and collusion in the rape of the student body, the ASUA regime receives a small remittance, so that it may continue to manufacture consent for its own parasitic existence.

We feel that the only real decision facing the ASUA committee of ten is whether they should at last denounce themselves as hapless apologists for the military-industrial complex, or instead publicly acknowledge their ranks as the training ground for the next wave of pandering demogogues.

Jesse Showalter
English Sophomore

Robert Horning
English Graduate Student