Last night's student government forum at NC A&T was more fun than candidates are supposed to have. As a contrast to the bland LWV forum a few days ago, the Aggies created an atmosphere of contentiousness and the students demonstrated sincere curiousity about who the candidtes are and why they were there.
Although I have no way to substantiate my claim, I am confident that some of the students were planted to ask questions that were meant to disparage certain candidates, namely Tom Phillips. As a matter of fact, one of the organizers came up to me before the event and suggested that if I had supporters at the forum, she would see that those questions were asked so the ability to "plant" was presumably extended to all: however some had more notice of the opportunity than others it would seem.
Yvonne Johnson and Claudette Burroughs-White were in great form and everything they said was met with enthusiastic applause. I would love to have been able to greet the crowd as "my young brothers and sisters" but such a greeting is not available to a white man when in front of an African American audience. Despite the depth of my sincerity and longing to be able to address them in that manner, I would be quickly called down for and accused of condescention and/or pandering... a reverse Uncle Tom.
I was the only at-large challenger in attendence and I failed to capitalize on this advantage as much as I could have. The N&R did report (not posted, again) on the absence of the other two however.
Perhaps I could have gone in more of an attack mode against my opponents, but apparently this would not have been the place to do it. Mayorial candidate Bruce Ashley tried to answer many of the student's questions by slamming Mayor Holliday. A student came to the mike and laid him out for doing so. She suggested that Ashley might have decided to attack the Mayor in front of a college student audience because he thought they might think it was "cool", she said he had tragically miscalculated. So in hindsight, keeping my powder dry was the right decision (I do still have some reserves).
It probably looked like Tom Phillips and I were getting along famously during the forum because we kept wispering to each other. In reality, I was following up on the Rhino's article by Scott Yost where he pointed out that Ashley said the word "jobs" 10,643 times during the LWV forum. Everytime Bruce said "jobs" I made a mark on my notebook and Phillips was making sure I didn't miss any. The count was a measly 423. This leads me to believe that Yost went to sleep long before he said he did during the LWV forum and actually made the number up.
10:08:29 AM 
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