Section 6. My last (revolutionary) gasp
Although I was not really interested in student government, I ran three times for various offices. I got nowhere in my first two races (except possibly some name recognition), but was elected as a class representative to the student council for my senior year. I remember almost nothing about this … with one exception. A meeting had been called of the senior class officers and representatives for some unknown (well, at least to me) reason. John Murphy (the senior class president) announced the sole purpose of the meeting was to choose a girl to represent our class as the homecoming queen. Well, as I will detail elsewhere1, there were a number of girls in our class that I had crushes one and thought might be worthy, but I had no time to consider who I might choose to nominate, as John immediately proposed that Ann Smith be chosen. Well, I was nonplussed at this – John was a popular guy and I had no wish to cross him, and, as I said, I hadn’t any time to think things over and come up with any other suggestions. Evidently neither did anyone else, so Ann became the homecoming queen with a minimum of fuss. Thus I learned how politics worked in high school.
In 1970-71, I was now a senior and top of the food chain, classwise. My “legitimate” office as a representative was not all that compelling (I can only remember attending two or three meetings, tops), while I was still impressed by Ned’s LSU/ULC stunt two years previously. I was too much of a loner to even try to work with other kids as he had, but I did come up with something on my own.
That was to get students from a variety of offices or positions to sign their “powers” over to me, and with those in my pocket, to take over the school … as the first step to taking over the rest of the globe (following up with what Doug Costanza and I started in McCloskey’s Civics class the previous year, although I never was able to work out an “end game” of what to do after high school). So, from April 29 through May 20, 1971, I approached 36 people, and got 34 of them to sign over their powers to me (in each case, I also had a witness who attested to the signature) – I only whiffed on Steve Davis (soccer team) and John Murphy (senior class president). By the way, I still have all the signed papers – two examples are pictured here Dave Vandenberg’s (one of the first people I approached, witnessed by Jo Carol Gordon) (Fig. 3.6.1) and Steve Mann’s (witnessed by Reid Karkau)(Fig. 3.6.2) – so don’t you 34 people think you’re out of the woods yet.
All in all, I think I did a decent job at infiltrating key areas of responsibility2. I got four of the five main Student Body officers (Kyle Skipper, Dan McGrath, Jo Carol Gordon, and Gary Kolb, missing only Ann Asp), as well as the major media outlet on campus (ie. the El Gato). Although my inroads into the athletic side of campus were minimal, I at least had almost complete control over the Math and Latin clubs (trusting brains would succeed over brawn?). And if you are questioning the value of having a senior lunch line worker included, well, all I can say is that I’m a guy whose first concern is always his stomach.
My plan was to announce the coup at an all-school assembly near the end of the year, and I asked Kyle Skipper (who was the emcee) to include me as a last minute speaker – I remember spending the complete assembly trying to figure out what I was actually going to say. But at the last minute, Kyle simple decided to not call on me, and that was that, and my coup ended as quietly as my brother’s demands two years earlier.
This was reported by Fred Woodson in the May 21, 1971 issue of the El Gato (Vol. 43 #17) under the story “Lunatic Fringe Triumphant!” Unfortunately, the article has several inaccuracies: for example, Fred invented a bit about the “autograph ploy” out of whole cloth, and tried to put a positive spin on the inspiration for the coup, when in fact it was just me having a bit o’ fun.
1 Section 8 of this chapter, in fact.
2 See Appendix B for the complete list of people I subverted.