Re: “SFUO election period begins” (News, Jan. 26)
ON PAGE 7 of the Jan. 26 issue of the Fulcrum, a cartoon was published that left me feeling alienated. Devin Beauregard’s political cartoon depicted Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) executive members Liz Kessler and Paige Gallette trying to get Sarah Jayne King out of her “Panic Room.” However, the jokes made, and the true meaning of the cartoon, are smudged and lost.
Upon my first reading, I assumed the comic was written with reference to a scandal that occurred during the 2011 SFUO election: King received the second most votes for her position, yet was still elected vp finance because her opponent, Tristan Dénommée, was disqualified post-election. If this is the scandal the comic is referring to, Beauregard’s cartoon should have been published a year ago!
The inclusion of a Panic Room also confused me. The only reason I could fathom for King being in the bathroom rather than her office was that she was hoping to cause a ruckus and get attention. Perhaps the author of the comic wanted to parallel a stereotype of high-school girls hiding in the bathroom in an effort to call King childish or immature. Was this the joke Beauregard was trying to make? Has King acted like a child?
But the biggest source of confusion comes from the caption: “The Fulcrum prints ten thousand issues a week.” Now, one can read this ending in two different ways. The first way to read the ending pokes fun at the SFUO, and implies that the executive is so out of touch with the student population, they are unaware the Fulcrum has a readership large enough to warrant printing 10,000 copies.
The second way to read the ending pokes fun at the Fulcrum, and implies that Gallette is not out of touch at all—the Fulcrum is wasteful by printing way too many issues for such a small or non-existent readership. As far as I can tell, neither of these approaches to understanding the comic really make sense.
It is evident that though the Fulcrum does have a large readership, many copies go to waste each week. I have seen Fulcrum staffers take tall stacks of expired, unread issues and dump them in bins. It is odd that the Fulcrum would brag about how many issues they print, instead of how many issues are actually read. The number of copies printed each week loses meaning without readership information. I see no reason for printing so many issues if they are going to waste.
So, after dissecting this comic, I am still out of touch. The inclusion of King appears to be an out-of-date or misinformed attack. The reference to the Fulcrum does not correlate with the initial point the cartoon is making. I would like to understand the comic, and I hope my confusion will one day be cleared up.
Nicholas Giardini
Third-year psychology student
