C-SPAN Election Bus Tours UMB

C-SPAN and its election bus are expected to stop by the UMass Boston campus on Election Day, according to university officials.

Come the morning of Election Day, students shouldn’t be surprised to see C-SPAN’s mobile studio unit out in front of the Campus Center lawn. Political junkies who religiously watch to the channel’s un-edited, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House of Representatives and are bemoaning the upcoming end of the Booknotes series can catch the bus from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

The bus, which will have a counterpart in Austin, Texas, will have C-SPAN representatives to show students a behind-the-scenes look at how C-SPAN covers politics.

Several UMass Boston professors often employ C-SPAN in the classroom, using the station’s cable archives to enable students to catch Secretary of State Colin Powell at a Senate hearing on the year’s budget, or a House hearing on broadcast decency standards.

Ripped From Front Page

For junkies of another kind, this week’s World Series offers a welcome respite from the whirlwind world of constant politics and never-ending political coverage.

On campus, support for the hometown team is long and deep, as students trudge bleary-eyed into class after long nights of watching the self-described idiot savant Red Sox come back from a 3-0 game deficit to win the pennant against the clean-cut Yankees.

Ripped from the Boston Herald’s front page, a makeshift poster reading “Babe, You’re History” hangs on the door of the Office of Administration and Finance in the Quinn Administration Building’s third floor.

Inside, Vice Chancellor Ellen O’Connor howls with laughter. “The accomplishment of the Red Sox to date is one of the single most important athletic events in my lifetime,” she says, after regaining some poise.

Asked if she will be watching the Red Sox over the weekend, O’Connor exclaimed, “Are you kidding? Is there anything else to do?”

Bulger Used to Bludgeon Dem Candidates

Former UMass President William Bulger may be out of office nowadays, but that hasn’t stopped state Republicans from using him as a stick to beat their Democratic opponents with.

Republican flyers are targeting Democratic incumbents on votes on Bulger that never happened, according to a recent report by the Associated Press. Susan Fargo of Lincoln is being accused of letting Bulger receive a $1 million severance deal when he resigned in August 2003.

State Republican Party Chairman Darrell Crate told AP, in an odd bit of logic, that the flyer was referencing a vote in favor of a UMass restructuring plan, which helped Bulger keep the job, eventually leading to his million dollar golden parachute.

“She voted for the restructuring at UMass which gave Billy Bulger a cushy job and without that job he would not have been able to obtain that pension,” Crate said.

Fargo fired back, calling the flyer’s accusations “distortions and outright lies,” adding she never voted to give Bulger a pension.

“The Legislature had nothing to do with it,” she told AP. “I am alarmed and very disappointed at the very negative tone of the campaign.”

But Bulger appears to be enjoying a different kind of hardball during his retirement. The former university president was spotted last week by the Boston Globe in Fenway Park’s right field luxury seats, watching the Red Sox make a stunning comeback against the Yankees in the ACLS.