Ah, if there's one good thing about finding a computer at a University lab the week before finals, it's that while you wait for each Webpage to load, you can read a whole chapter of a book. I realize UT is financially strapped and asking them to get more bandwidth right now is a losing cause, but for the students who live in the dorms and don't have another way of accessing the Internet than through the University's lines, how can they be expected to do serious research on their papers? (Yes, some students actually do use campus Internet for research, believe it or not.)
Anyway, the first meeting about the Spectrum elections is at the top of the hour, and I've been spending a good portion of today going back over all of my allegations, cross-referencing them with the Spectrum and UT laws that the process violated. This whole process is making me realize the double bind I'm in; I try to be a free-going, easy spirit, and not care too much about "the rules" and all of that, but there are times when rules are needed to help achieve a higher purpose, in this case the furthering of Spectrum both within the campus GLBT community and the larger campus community as a whole. I'm not just talking about what happened at the elections here either, because for the whole semester Spectrum's been run with basically no rules, and I believe that's resulted in our dwindling attendance and morale.
Sometimes I hate being "the adult" in matters like this, but Spectrum was pretty much my entire support net throughout my undergraduate career, and I've seen both how Spectrum can be that support net, and how it can degenerate into chaos and be corrupted by factors that don't have their place in an organization of its type. I don't want to see Spectrum get like that again, and if I have to put my own neck on the line like this, losing a lot of the friendships I've made in the process, then so be it. I can't just sit back and allow Spectrum to get any worse than it's already gotten this year.