Good News / Bad News

Good news: UCLA has gotten itself a humor third party, the Bruin Liberation Movement. The SQUELCH! Party is cited as the guiding light for this party, so to speak. From the article:

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The Bruin Liberation Movement, whose candidates turned heads at the campaign orientation meeting Tuesday in chicken suits and pumpkin costumes, said they intend to bring fun and spirit to the elections...

Despite their humorous antics, Campos stressed their concrete goals such as small-scale low-cost programming and unifying the student body.

Presidential candidate Jake Strom said the Bruin Liberation Movement supports erecting a ski lift to transport students from Sproul Hall to Bunche Hall, free kettle korn on Thursday afternoons, replacing Murphy Hall with the world's largest bounce house, and presenting the option for faculty members to be paid in arcade tokens...

UC Berkeley's Squelch Party, a joke slate loosely affiliated with a campus humor magazine, has been successful in recent years at having candidates elected to Berkeley's student senate.

"They typically don't really run to win – they run to bring some sort of humor or perspective to the campaign," said Misha Leybovich, president of the Associated Students of the University of California.

Elected Squelch Party members have tackled serious issues while serving on student government.

"The humor I think helps the association," Leybovich said.

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So the movement is spreading! President Leybovich is wrong about one thing: you can run for fun and to win simultaneously.

Bad news: there's also a "Bruins United Party" down there too. They, however, don't seem to have the more marginally crazy element, so maybe it's not so bad.

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