Imagine this: H.R. McMaster, current National Security Adviser and UNC graduate, pens a column in our beloved Daily Tar Heel. In this guest column, McMaster slams the Board of Elections for its continued meddling in the student body president election.
Eventually, he would argue that our student body president-elect, Elizabeth Adkins, did not deserve her win based on a demographic feature of her identity, perhaps her identification as an Asian-American. Further, a disqualified candidate claimed that they were disqualified for being white and heterosexual. This would be inconceivable, right?
Well, think again.
Last week, Secretary Rick Perry, our newly appointed Secretary of Energy, intervened in the student body president race at the public Texas A&M University, his alma mater, by writing an op-ed for The Houston Chronicle to take sides in a student body presidential election. The candidate Perry favored, Robert McIntosh, garnered enough votes to win but was subsequently disqualified for a campaign finance violation after the election results were announced.
Secretary Perry decided it was his place to comment on a student body president election, instead of doing his job.
Perry’s furor over a student body election technicality has been cast by some critics as a homophobic maneuver. The student body president-elect at Texas A&M, Bobby Brooks, is the first openly gay man elected to the office. However, an additional — and not as passionately discussed — part of this controversy is that Perry’s choice candidate, McIntosh, just so happens to be the son of prominent Republican Texan fundraiser Alison McIntosh.
Brooks questioned why the Secretary of Energy would feel compelled to comment publicly on the election and his identity. “I was very curious as to why Rick Perry would have devoted his time to this,” Brooks told The New York Times on Friday. “And also why he would use my full name in the story.” Our board wonders the same.
In his op-ed, Perry deliberately plays into the persecuted conservative college student narrative that this paper has gone to great lengths to admonish. Hypocritically, the conservative movement often accuses liberal college students of being coddled, sensitive snowflakes who need help from adults at every turn.
Now, the well-connected McIntosh is reportedly considering suing for discrimination — arguing that he has been discriminated against for being a white, heterosexual Christian. While our board sympathizes with the arbitrariness of SBP race rules, this seems patently absurd.
