Campaigning for Student Senate President
Eric Moore discusses campaigning for Student Senate President.
Interview on 2012-05-17 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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So one night I got invited over to the house of Wesley McClure,
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who at the time was-.
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I don't know what his role was. He was about to run for student body president.
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At the same time they were restructuring the constitution
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so that rather than a president of student government and a vice president of student government
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they had a student government president and a student senate president,
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who was in effect the vice president.
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So I'm sitting with Wes and some of the other student leaders
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and just out of the blue they said, "Eric, you seem to be well respected by the student senate.
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"Have you considered running for student senate president?"
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So I'm looking at them like, are you serious? They said yes.
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So I said, "Well, first of all I have to-." They said, "Don't worry about that."
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"If you're interested in running we'll try to help make it happen."
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At the time I was working at WKNC
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and George Patton, who was the editor of the Technician, we were literally next door to each other
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George knew that I was running
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so a decision was made that my picture would not appear before the election was over
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because that might have an impact on whether I would get elected or not.
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So of course all the signs went out: Eric Moore.
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Fortunately that didn't sound much like an African American name so it's, oh yeah, I'm voting for Eric Moore.
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Well there was a guy named Sam Bays who was active in student government
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and he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Mus, affectionately known as the Sammies,
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and most people knew that they were the Jewish fraternity.
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So I remember after the election was over,
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the day after the election, my picture's on the front page:
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"Moore Elected Student Senate President."
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And of course now it's all over campus and I'm in another meeting with some guys off campus and they said, "You mean to tell me I voted for-?"
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and Sam Bays said, "Yes, you did." [Laughs]
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
