Walking out from the ILC Wednesday, I noticed a bunch of signs around the area where mall-preacher Jed "Windsock" Smock was ranting on as usual, along with what appeared to be protest signs. Great, just give him more attention, will you?

So I head into the general vicinity to find that these aren't protesters. Rather, about seven or eight black students are rallying for Michael Franklin.

Hey, who are you voting for?
I'm voting for Michael Franklin! How about you?
I'm voting for Michael Franklin, too!
Um, uh...
How do you spell his name?

The rally goes on.

Full Disclosure: Two of the rallyers are good friends of mine, and one of them asked me to sign his petition for candidacy, even though I knew none of his positions, as campaining was not allowed to start yet. I signed the petition, in light that the more candidates there are, the more likely there might be better ones in office, but neither the signature nor this review constitute endorsement of Mr. Franklin's candidacy.

Franklin's statement on the ASUA website emphasizes his work with Showtime Athletics, a presumably non-profit organization which seeks to help student athletes without an athletic scholarship to college. Other issues include the need for social activities, "building a stronger community" (whatever that means), and "see[ing] minorities play a larger role". The statement itself does not include a link to his website, which contains the exact same statement as previously mentioned and his platforms.

"Minorities" again come up in his platforms, but now in a more prominent role, going to far as to call for "minority ambassadors." I would think that political minorities (conservatives and libertarians) would be more deserving of such "ambassadors". Go figure.

To Franklin's credit, he opposes the mandatory meal plan, and is in favor of a bicameral ASUA legislature, creating a "house of representatives" made up of unpaid students in order to represent individual colleges within the university.

Like many platforms I've read so far, Franklin's platform fails to give many specifics. For example, he advocates "working with alumni". How? What will they do for us? Build another platform for Jed Smock?

Michael L. Franklin earns the Stupid White Men Award, the LMTH Award, and the Oh Looky I Know Photoshop award for overemphasis of "minority" status, making me log on to The Facebook to find his website and platforms, having a badly-programmed hit counter (try refreshing on the page), and crudely editing himself next to Michael Vick.

Edit: I was told later on that at least three of the students rallying for Mr. Franklin were not of African descent, so at 1738, I changed the word "African" to "black." --GPO