Monday Madness: One empire, under Steve

We pledge allegiance to the flag

of the empire of Steve the Enforcer,

and to the hypocrisy, for which it stands,

One discrimination, under Steve,

Intimidated, with blackmail and corruption for all.

Steve Ostrowski, a UC Davis student, has been the subject of a bit of controversy on campus. All of his own making, of course.

Steve, a committed Christian, wanted to know how he could make a lasting contribution to the nation, to the Associated Students of UC Davis, and to the world. Bring cleaner mass transit vehicles to town? Bring social justice to the underpriviledged? Donate blood to the Red Cross? No. He decided that he would get a few ASUCD senators to say the pledge of allegiance.

An aspiring politician, Steve decided to start his own political party to run candidates in ASUCD elections. Initially, he called it the Christian Slate – and the slate’s agenda included, among other things, was “To advance the Christian agenda in the ASUCD government with the eventual control of the Senate, Executive, Courts, and committees.” Steve, errr, the Christian Slate set out to finally bring tolerance and fairness to the dominant religious group on campus – for some strange reason Christianity was not allowed to run the government! Steve would put a stop to that.

The first item on the agenda was of course, the Pledge of Allegiance. In the spring of 2006, while the Christian Slate was in its infancy, as in, just a page on the Davis Wiki, Steve submitted a Pledge of Allegiance bill. It failed. Some of the reasons given were that it would slow down the meetings, many students were not citizens of the U.S., and “Under God” would offend those who weren’t religious. Steve vowed to get them to say “one nation under God” one way or another.

Over the summer, the Christian Slate, which had drawn objections from nearly everyone on the Davis Wiki, was summarily renamed to become the Christian Democratic Party. Because there’s nothing more democratic than a theocracy! There was a brief controversy over how many members the “slate” actually had – Steve thought he could count people who were on his MySpace mailing list as members – vastly over-inflating his membership. Actually, any number over 11 is probably vastly over-inflated.

During the summer, Steve entertained himself by forming a group on Myspace that set out to have the accounts of atheists and other non-christians deleted. He wrote about his so-called “MySpace Wars” on the wiki, but seeing as how it was his own private endeavor, it had no relevance to Davis and was removed. But we thank Emperor Steve for so candidly writing about his bigotry for all to see. This is the same guy who said he would “expose the hypocrisy of anti-Christian elements on campus.” Hyyyyypooooocrrrrit!
Emperor? Apparently, Steve had taken a liking to thinking of himself as a Dark Lord of the Sith. Perhaps a combination of the feeling of power he ot from attacking people on MySpace, combined with an affinity for the idea of shooting lightning out of his fingers. Or perhaps, because he knew that the only way he could “advance the Christian agenda” in government was to be sneaky?
With his re-named re-forged slate, he tried running a candidate in the fall ASUCD election. Apparently, not enough people felt the same way he did about spreading the “good word” through politics – maybe they were stuck in the “ancient” idea of being a living example for one’s worldview – but whatever the reasons, his candidate was out-voted.

Steve submitted a second Pledge Bill to ASUCD in the fall of 2006. It failed, by an even bigger margin than the first. What was Steve to do?

Apparently, he thought he could work his way up the ranks – after a controversial vote of the ASUCD Senate, he ended up becoming a a member of the External Affairs Commission. But the Pledge Bill was going to be submitted again, and was likely to be voted down with Steve powerless to stop it. How could he get it to pass?
Solution: File three court cases against ASUCD officials, over menial technicalities. What was this to accomplish, though? It seemed a mystery, until an ASUCD official received an email from someone calling themself “The Emperor.” Sent anonymously (but with a familiar handle) on the day that the three court cases were served, this email from The Emperor said that there would be a way out of this “ASUCD Court War.” How?

“If you want to stop these three court cases and three more that will probably be sent in the next month I want this [Pledge of Allegiance bill] done.”

Darth Sneakius, however, was pinned for the email in the Aggie. Besides the fact that he is the author of the bill in question, he also started the frivolous court cases, and he also calls his little world “Steve Empire” with himself, of course, as The Emperor. A fine fantasy world, indeed!

Steve denied ever seeing the email on the Aggie, despite all these coincidences.

Now, reader, you might ask yourself, if you were falsely accused of authoring an email that people interpreted as blackmail (or you did write it and would like to think it was a false accusation), what would you do next? Think about it, the school paper has never written an article about you before, and now it has been suggested that you are abusing the student courts to advance your own political agenda. Would you, let’s say, send another email, this time identifying yourself by name, to one of the defendants, offering a secret deal to drop the case against them?
If you said no to the above question, then you are an intelligent individual. If you answered yes, then your name would be Steve Ostrowski. And you would be an idiot. Although it is the most likely explanation, maybe he didn’t write the first email, but now everyone thinks that he did.
As reported in the Aggie, Steve asked to be able to secretly edit the ASUCD senate meeting minutes in return for dropping the case against senate recorder Bobby Gray.

“The Court Case will be dropped if you allow me to assist you with the Senate minutes,” the e-mail said. “Knowledge of these edits would be between you and me and no one else, because I don’t want people in ASUCD to think less of you, and think that I am trying to manipulate the minutes.”

How kind. But apparently as evidenced byt he email, Steve thought less of Bobby Gray, and Bobby Gray thought even less of Steve. He did the right thing and turned in the email. Steve objected, saying he didn’t want to “bias” the minutes… right. That’s why he asked it to be a kept a secret. Now that the second email was out, I asked Steve, directly, if he would categorically deny writing or knowing anything about the origin of the first email. It has been two weeks with no response.
Next, the Aggie Editorial Board gave their opinion that a meeting should be called to discuss Steve’s actions and whether or not he should be fired from his ASUCD position.

The meeting took place, and he was fired. But he could still intimidate people with the court cases, right? Well, it turns out, when you have court case hearings, you have to show up and submit briefs explaining your position. And he didn’t. All three court cases were dropped. The Emperor wasn’t going to allow the courts to stop him – he would instead use the court of public opinion to get the Pledge of Allegiance read aloud at ASUCD.

Keep in mind, the public opinion is already of the conclusion that Steve Ostrowski blackmailed ASUCD officials with frivolous court cases that were thrown out.

So Steve Ostrowski invited a friend of his with a video camera to attend the ASUCD Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) meeting where his Pledge Bill would come up for round three. The “friend,” who identified himself as “Steve” was really from a conservative organization that has given him money for his “Davis Enforcer” rag. The IAC meeting was adjourned due to the disruption, and Steve Ostrowski denied knowing the name of the interloper. Wait, could it be that in “Steve Empire” everyone’s name is Steve?
Steve 1 initially played dumb about the video. He implied that Steve 2 did this of his own volition.

“I went to IAC for the purpose of presenting my Pledge Bill, and my friend from out of state decides to go ahead and video tape it.”

“It seems an LI member made a video on Youtube with the Internal Affairs Commission, that’s interesting and not totally unexpected.”

Steve 1 then admitted to inviting Steve 2 in the latest issue of the “Davis Enforcer,” which Steve 2′s organiztion gave $750 to Steve 1 to write.

The goal of the video intimidation is to try to ruin the reputations of ASUCD officials who vote down the Pledge Bill, or to intimidate them into voting for it. I first realized that Darth Steve must have invited his Apprentice Steve when I noticed (besides all the coincidences) that Steve 1 fantasized on his blog about dramatizing ASUCD meetings to produce video versions of the meetings… and the implication was that these videos could be used to paint political opponents in a bad light.

All of this, to get ASUCD to say the Pledge of Allegiance (and “so help me God” – another bill that failed) to “advance the Christian agenda.” People, if Christianity is about love, respect, honesty, and anything else that makes you feel warm and cuddly – this guy is not Christian. The agenda was his own, and he abused the courts, blackmailed people, and tried to intimidate them to do it. But you could form an argument in the other direction – that his attempts are a natural consequence in believing that he is absolutely right – no matter what he does. There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who does evil in the name of good.
So there you have it. Steve Ostrowski is the weekly winner of being a part of Monday Madness. A collection of the most inane human behaviors I come across, whenever I have the time to write about them. (Note: I’m not particularly interested in student politics – however, I found this situation interesting because Steve trumped up the ethical basis for his views, and yet, attacked people with opposing views with bigoted statements. He went against everything he preached, and he’s also been a destructive editor on the Davis Wiki. He needs to get a better hobby. Actually, people on the wiki are debating whether or not to ban him.)
You can check out more details if you so choose, at Steve Ostrowski’s public wiki page, or you could check out his livejournal blog. However, you’re likely to find a number of questionable statements such as: “And generally I don’t like science; it has too many facts and concepts.”

Reality has too many facts and concepts for Steve. Thanks for reading.

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2 Responses to Monday Madness: One empire, under Steve

  1. Steve Empire says:

    I always get a good laugh out of this entry.

  2. You know what they say – A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. :)

    Thanks for stopping by.

    Update for everyone else: I asked Steve on his personal wiki page again, who has been kind enough to join us here, whether he would make an unequivocal statement denying involvement in the “anonymous” email from “The Emperor.” The silence is deafening.