Thursday, April 29, 2010

Mission Statement

Alex Kaplan
brother, leader, martyr

The Coalition for the Restoration of Alex Kaplan in the Cal Poly Community (or CRAKCPC, for short) is a grassroots movement which began in late April 2010. We were forced to watch as Cal Poly's favorite son, Alex Kaplan, fell victim to the twisted gaze of mainstream media (MSM). Cal Poly's student-run newspaper, The Mustang Daily, coordinated a deliberate smear campaign against Kaplan from the very onset of his campaign. After over a thousand Mustang Daily partisans and Storelli brown shirts had taken to publicly mocking this great man, the criticism became too much to bear. His campaign was in ruin, and his reputation lay wretched in its wake. He had no choice but to concede.

Now, we the members of CRAKCPC are resolved to see the restoration of a tragic hero in his darkest hour.

We demand:

1. The immediate public apology of the entire staff of the Mustang Daily, and its subsequent resignation. The corruption's roots run deep; every student involved in the creation of those fateful newspaper articles is culpable for these heinous crimes, from lowly photographer Patrick Fina to disgraced Editor-in-Chief Emilie Egger, whose name is as alliterative as she is illiterate.

2. The concession of Sarah Storelli from the ASI Presidential race. We will not stand for the noxious, white supremacist vitriol which fuels her campaign, nor will we let her role as co-conspirator in the plot against Alex Kaplan go unpunished. Once she has publicly announced her resignation, she must surrender herself to Judicial Affairs, where she will be placed at the mercy of the same corrupt bureaucracy which once sought to put her in power.

3. The restoration of Alex Kaplan's Presidential campaign, as well as the guaranteed inclusion of his name on the election ballot. To permit this farcical trope of Democracy to continue unchecked would be a crime of the same magnitude and nature as those already perpetrated against him.

4. The seizure and subsequent redistribution of Sarah Storelli's hoard of campaign wealth among the students of Cal Poly, as penance for her crimes. In addition, Storelli's red-shirted gestapo will be made to submit their campaign uniforms to a pyre; its cleansing fire will purge our proud university of the taint of her actions.

5. The tearing down of the exterior walls of the University Union. No longer will Kelly Griggs and her ASI junta be permitted to coordinate and execute their nefarious machinations protected by the cloister of an urban fortress. The reign of the clandestine regime of ASI's shadow government is coming to a close. With Alex Kaplan, an era of progress and radical transparency will be ushered in, and "better communication and shit" along with it.

We stand at the precipice of a moment of great change, and we do so in solidarity with a greater man. If our demands are not met promptly and in full, there will be a reckoning the likes of which our campus has never witnessed. The Mustang Daily will have its darkest secrets brought to light, and in the process it will fall further from grace, to the darkest depths of the journalistic abyss. The ensuing controversy will no doubt cause the Journalism Department to be denied its request for reaccreditation. Closet Alex Kaplan supporters will rise, and the University Union will run red with the cast-down shirts of Storelli's secret police.

Alex Kaplan has endured character assassination, and worse. Now, let us effect his restoration and see justice brought unto those who once conspired against him.

3 comments:

  1. 1. The paper only made factual statements, most of which came from statements from Alex himself. Why would journalists resign for reporting facts-thats their job!

    2. Storelli has done nothing to attack Alex. Your complaints are with the newspaper and people who commented on the article.

    3. Alex Kaplan made the decision to drop out.

    4. See my response to #2.

    5. Instead of wasting your time whining, why don't you do something constructive with your time to help improve ASI?

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  2. Brian Oppenheimer:

    Clearly your college education is not serving you well. This has been a coordinated smear campaign even if not premeditated. By ignoring the duty of news reporters everywhere and editorializing on a straight news piece, the Daily has committed integrity suicide (although, this wasn't the first time...).

    The Daily has violated their journalistic duty to remain neutral. Yes, the paper can endorse a candidate, but it can not become a tabloid. This is something learned by high school students taking their first newspaper class. Indeed, I would argue that many people know this without taking such a class. Excepting yourself, apparently. Class is now in session. Please pay attention.

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  3. In refutation to all of your points:

    1&2. Slanted factual statements are a characteristic of tabloids and not a fixture of an aspiring, reputable journalistic medium which the university should be supporting. You should be outraged that a portion of the institution of higher learning you attend is letting this go unchecked. This attitude that you are conveying is what causes democracy to fail and extremism to exist in this century. You are failing future generations by allowing a select few to bully free speech and dominate expression. You, sir, are supporting a dangerous precedent where a group of people are allowed to dictate facts and do with reality as they please. The entire point of a newspaper is to report the facts as accurately as possible without bias. For the author of the article and the Daily to print this smut and for your to coolly brush it off (because perhaps you support the Storelli campaign) is to marginalize your free speech. Had the Daily run this the other way, you would be screaming until someone heard you. For this hypocrisy, I deem you blind to events. In your stupor, you can not seem to vaguely ponder the repercussions of such a tawdry set of accusations by the Daily and ostensibly allow the pillars of our democracy to fail.
    3. He was clearly pressured by social forces. Attempting to divorce a terribly pointed attack article and his decision indicates your short memory. There is absolutely every reason to believe that this was the cause of his decision. We are not debating in a vacuum on this topic. He was pressured to drop out by the flagrant lack of control by the Daily to control its content in a fair manner by excluding this candidate's legitimate position and running a character assassination on him. The Daily has taken a side in the debate without giving Mr. Kaplan a fair shake and shirking away from their journalistic duty. How is this democracy? How is this just? You are endorsing a dangerous position and I can only hope that karma exists solely that one day you watch yourself in a similar circumstance fall prey to those who do not hold fairness and the power of words in such high esteem as restorealexkaplan.com.
    4. Go fuck yourself.
    5. See my response to #4.

    No great historical movement occurred within system. Nelson Mandela did not run for a senate seat to end Apartheid. Ghandi did not need to be knighted to end the British Empire's hold on India. Dr. Martin Luther King did not ask his followers to run for congressional seats to enact equality statutes for all races, creeds, and colors. We did not ask nicely from the King of England to equalize our tea taxes with market value. We fought a terrible and costly war to establish the freedoms that you so cursorily abandon. Our forefathers ensured the first amendment which the the Daily and yourself mock completely. Perhaps you were sleeping in all of your history classes and should read the Declaration of Independence (to start with) to catch up on these instances in history.

    It is not the will of a government that always steers social change. restorealexkaplan.com is equally legitimate if not more so than your ineffectual student government. Their inability to comment on these events and police their own elections further adds to their lame function.

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