Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Forum

Luke Adams responds

I must say I take great offense at being told that I am not "taking this campaign seriously."

For one thing, it definitely shows a clear disconnect at The Daily; whoever wrote this completely ignored profiles on me that have shown up in your own newspaper and explain my position very clearly. As Nathan Adkisson wrote in the April 11 Daily, my main campaign style is to capture the attention of students through comedy and one-on-one dialogue instead of flyers and chalk.

Is my integrity being questioned because I don't go around campus taping garbage to the ground? Because I don't enlist the aid of superficial minions to pass out quickly discarded flyers to students who are already late for class?

My campaign is word-of-mouth and electronic; it is a grass-roots campaign that treats students as intelligent, quirky people who realize that unconventionality does not equal unprofessionalism. I am using my creativity to get the attention of students.

I dress up as the prolific rapper Eljay and the early 1900s stump speaker Cornelius L. Goosefood, and lightheartedly promise to move the lake closer to campus (a very obvious joke, and the only one of my issues to be said to have a completion date of Summer 2035). Once I have their attention, we get down to the issues. A student at the Rock today from Reformed University Fellowship talked to me about how he is perturbed that religious groups cannot receive ASG funding, but cultural groups can. Yes, I was dressed as Eljay. But you had better believe that he knew I was serious when I pledged to act on this issue if elected. I could have ran by him and shoved a flyer in his face with that same information on religious group funding, but I guarantee it would not have had the same impact.

Whoever wrote this piece obviously cannot grasp a confluence of wit and wisdom, of satire and sincerity. You didn't read your own articles, you didn't watch the Thursday debate in which I clearly described my campaign style and my stance, you took my Web site completely out of context and you therefore are completely unwarranted in saying that I don't take my campaign seriously.

Continued...

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