short stories / By Japhet Weeks

Robo Conspiracy

(May 1, 2008)  Something is rotten in the State University of Humboldt. At least, that’s what former Associated Students Legislative Affairs Vice President Jason Robo is saying.

Robo, a senior majoring in political science and economics, is a self-proclaimed “scholarly revolutionary,” and in the most recent campus elections, in which he stood as a candidate for student body president, he received 232 out of a total of 823 votes — just six votes shy of his competition, Luke Ferrari. Robo was expecting a run-off election. That is, until he was placed on disciplinary probation, which automatically disqualified him from holding elected office.

Robo thinks the action was a calculated attempt by the campus administration to silence him — citing his active and vocal criticism of them as motive enough. But HSU Vice President for Student Affairs Steven Butler insists that Robo was found responsible for violation of the student code by a neutral adjudicated process. For privacy reasons, he couldn’t go into more detail.

“The ulterior motive of this,” Robo said from his apartment Monday evening, “has been to put me on a leash or to get rid of me.” If it were an isolated incident, Robo might not be so sure about the conspiracy to muffle him. But it isn’t.

In March, Robo was impeached by his fellow students — illegally, he says.

Robo hardly ever seems to need to search for the right word. He rails against the administration and some former fellow members of the student body he considers their lackeys with a razor-sharp silver tongue.

“Obedience is only due to legitimate power,” he said. Which is why after his impeachment he continued holding office hours in the AS office for his “constituency” — and in protest of his illegitimate ouster. But that’s not why Robo is on probation.

At some point prior to his impeachment Robo downloaded a torrent (file-sharing) program onto the AS office computer which he and other students shared. He used the torrent program to download books, he says. But someone — Robo insists it wasn’t him — downloaded a copy of Adobe Creative Suite onto the computer. Even though the Adobe programs were never installed, other users could still access them (torrent program of their own) and download it from the AS office. This produced heavy traffic and “shut down a bunch of [university] bandwidth,” according to Robo. It also shut down Robo’s prospects of ever again holding elected office at HSU.

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