It’s nearly time again for the excellent sheep to run for positions that nobody cares about, as filing for candidacy opened Monday. With NC State preparing to find its newest figurehead who sucks up to the administration, the Technician spoke with Student Body President Khari Cyrus, the Great of the Achaemenid house, to discuss his lack of accomplishments thus far and what he plans to do in his final semester away from the helm.
Q: What were some of the highlights of your presidency last semester?
A: I’ve had a time serving as student body president. The pay is really nice; plus, I get my student leader parking pass. Being able to sit on the Board of Trustees and nod approvingly so I don’t step on any toes is an amazing experience. People will debate about what the most important aspect of the office is, but a major highlight for my term was being able to send out repetitive mass emails that nobody reads.
Q: What do you have planned for this semester?
A: This semester I really want to focus on trivial initiatives that we’ll probably still not be able to accomplish before the year’s end. I’ve charged each of the executive departments with planning and executing a diversity-related event that will probably end up just being a sanctimonious documentary screening that four people will show up to. Students pay fees toward Student Government that they have little clout in determining, so my number-one goal is to appease them with bread and circuses so that they don’t rise up against me. But then again, this is the Wolfpack we’re talking about here. Sports are the only thing it’ll get uppity about. Some amount of my time will also be dedicated to telling people that I’m following up on the Student Government town hall on racial climate. I was serious when I told people that the town hall would not be the end of the conversation, but rather the start to more pretentious social justice echo chambers.
Q: A big tenant of your platform during your campaign was inclusion. What have you done to foster this on campus? How do you feel it has gone?
A: Inclusion was indeed a major portion of the platform (mostly just to be pedantic and marginally different than the other candidates who were running) and it’s something I’ve mentioned in passing to the executive cabinet to think about in the shower as we plan events. Our first half-baked effort for inclusion was with Respect the Pack at the beginning of the semester. We held it in Talley and made students complete several mundane tasks before they could receive the brand new Respect the Pack T-shirts made in Guatemala by little children who get paid 10 cents per shirt. I think this model helps people realize that liberal attempts to strive for social justice are often hypocritical and generally superficial. While Respect the Pack is my only barely substantive example, I think it speaks to what I’ve been trying to do all year: enough to get by.
Q: In an interview with the Technician last April, you said you had plans on:
• revitalizing UNC Rivalry Week for both fall and spring
• having TransLoc monitors installed at bus stops across campus
• creating dual-lot parking passes and reaching the goal of obtaining $10,000 in grants from the UNC Association of Student Governments.
What are the statuses on all of those plans? Do you expect to make any more progress on those?
A: Our UNC Rivalry Week has just been nominally rebranded into a contrived Traditions Week that will incorporate even more aspects of NC State’s sugarcoated mythos. The week is being planned as we speak by the Traditions Department, and I’m confident that all students will find free food at the silly events. As far as the Association of Student Governments, we’ve done a decent job of making sure that at least 12 people know of its existence. We haven’t hit the $10,000 mark, but we have submitted multiple requests to ASG to receive funding for various projects, like they have anything better to do. There’s a proposal currently being drafted that might push us over the $10,000 mark, but we’ll have to see how that plays out over the next couple of months. Finally, in regards to our ‘innovative’ ideas on transportation, we’ve yet to see much progress, thanks to the paralytic muck of bureaucracy and my lack of political will. With that being said, it’s something that students have consistently cited as one of the things they’d most like to see, so again, I want to encourage the next student body president to continue to pass the buck. A year in office isn’t a significant amount of time. I quickly realized that this was yet another means for the administration to suppress student agency. The year isn’t over yet, so I will continue to say I’m working to achieve all of the items on my platform.
Q: You also said you were working to get discounts on Hillsborough Street by using the debit card feature on the Wolfpack One Card. How is that going?
A: Oh, I promised that? To be honest, I totally forgot. You guys voted for me based off of that? Jesus, you’re gullible.
* Editors Note: The final question has been left out for multiple reasons. Firstly, it was genuinely insightful and satirizing it would be unfair and inappropriate. Also, we ran out of space.
