I must first apologize to my fellow students here at Stony Brook University. As our ‘chief servant’ so poignantly pointed out, I did deceive you in my last article, ‘Understanding Campus Cash.’ It seems as though Dominos Pizza and Subway, according to our ‘chief servant,’ do not offer a 10% discount currently. I actually went to Subway tonight for dinner, and he was in fact correct. I offer my humble apologies.

However, to the educated reader, everything that I mentioned in my article, sans the 10% offering, was all true. Our ‘chief servant’ began to mince words and add content that was not relevant to my original argument. The argument, and I repeat, the only argument that I laid out was the fact that there was a misquote from the article ‘Excessive Campus Meal Plan Options Restrict Students,’ which had stated that students would be allowed to ‘allocate’ money to their ‘Campus Cash’ account. The quote was as follows: ‘Students will be able to allocate a certain amount of money to an off campus debit account that can be used at approved vendors.’ My only motivation in writing my first article was to clarify and to correct. I then added my opinion, as it was my right in an OP-ED piece. For shame, I have wandered outside of my bounds as a USG senator, and spoken out against our ‘chief servant.’

To be sure, I am angry. I am very angry that my attempt to educate and inform was met with slander and jargon. Nowhere in my piece did I attempt to neither misinform nor mislead my fellow SBU students. It was simply a point of clarity. One that our ‘chief servant’ understood, yet chose to ignore, and instead filled the article with facts, that once again, did not pertain to the original article. It stated that you can use ‘Campus Cash’ for laundry. Hurray! You can now use it to purchase snacks in vending machines. Fantastic! You can also use it for printing machines in the HSC Library. Awesome! At any one point did our ‘chief servant’ refute how you can use it off-campus? I didn’t see it.

I can see that our ‘chief servant’ put a lot of time into the program. He mentioned it so many times that I lost count. His summer, which constitutes the end of May until the end of August, was dedicated to this program. However, it is now March, and this program is still not off the ground, though he assured it would be ‘sooner rather than later.’ It was worked on over the summer, huh? Time sure moves slowly around here. It is my right as a student to criticize my government when and where I see fit. It is also my right to criticize my ‘chief servant’ where I see fit, the First Amendment guarantees it. So, again, I’m terribly sorry to have offended.

I think it is also worth noting that I commended our ‘chief servant’ by spearheading this initiative. That obviously fell on deaf ears. The only thing that our ‘chief servant’ seemed to focus on was ‘the waste of time and energy.’ In my opinion, and yes, I am entitled to it, time and energy was wasted. I was not alone in my thoughts, and many other students that I have had lengthy conversations with agree with me. I don’t feel the need to start a pissing match with my ‘chief servant,’ but did he actually converse with students to get their opinion? Did he explain at lengths as to how the off-campus portion of ‘Campus Cash’ works? I don’t know, nor will accuse him of not doing so. I can only speak of my personal experiences.

I believe that the students of SBU, the readers of this paper, are intelligent enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong and when they are being misled. I don’t believe our ‘chief servant’ intended to mislead, but perhaps not tell the entire truth. It happens, my only wish is that when they’re called on it, they can take it as it is. We don’t need more pieces like ‘Response to Understanding Campus Cash.’ It is unnecessary and irrelevant. But, then again, everybody has their own opinion.

Jonathan Hirst, USG senator