It’s election season on campus, which is sort of like figure skating season. You look up one day and say, “oh, that again.” Like figure skating, the rules and point of the sport are vague, there’s lots of twirling and worst of all, none of the participants are ever threatened with grievous bodily harm.

The low point of the whole low thing is that none of the ex-athletes ever give up the sport. Their tights may not fit, their sequins may be ragged, but there is absolutely nothing that can keep an A.S. officeholder from squishing himself back into a ridiculous uniform and making an ass of himself.

Take A.S. President and Gauchoholic Brian Hampton. Sure it’s Spring Quarter and he’s past it as far as campus politics go, but he still wants to be a figure in the sport. As with any figure skater gone to seed, leaping, lutzing and made-for-TV boxing are out. Hampton isn’t running for office, so all he can do is play favorites with the new crowd.

Where to start, the man wonders. Well, his friend Scott McDowell does want to be external vice president for local affairs.

So, to help McDowell fill out a resume as thin as a 13-year-old Russian, Hampton chooses his good buddy, a Theta Chi brother unsullied by experience, to sit on the I.V. Project Area Commission. The thing has Isla Vista in its name and, being a committee and all, will sound good when McDowell is out campaigning. Too bad he’ll have to listen to all that stuff about housing, which as McDowell noted in debates Tuesday, is such a dull non-issue for a prospective EVPLA to have to worry about.

Then, off in the distance: grumbling. But it’s leggies. These are the same people who thought the current EVPLA – someone Hampton addresses only to exchanges dirty looks with – should be on IVPAC. Well, Hampton showed them by appointing an inoffensive gasbag who graduated six weeks later. So now there’s a vacancy, one which might as well be filled by his man McDowell who, unfortunately, is running against some non-Gauchoholic. The leggies want to know why Hampton didn’t interview anyone else, especially McDowell’s unworthy opponent.

Fine. Hampton interviews her and two other people for the job. But here’s where luck, or perhaps Hampton’s near-divine intuition, comes in – it turns out McDowell is the best person for the job. After all, he’s still Hampton’s friend and still running as a Gauchoholic. It just goes to show what his doubters, those under the spell of qualifications, know. Although the non-Gauchoholic was a “close second,” Hampton appointed his friend a second time.

Leg Council surrenders like a French figure skating judge.

The sequins don’t fit Hampton quite as well as they used to but he sure does enjoy his ice prancing.