I will always take ownership of my actions…. but in no way do you have any right or place to deem them “mistakes”. Thank you again for your rather worthless opinion in a situation that has not yet seemed to involve you whatsoever.

To which I am sure you are going to claim it does, which truly wouldn’t unless you happen to be a USC CR member, in which case I consider it funny that we have never seen you at a meeting before. Ever.

If you happen to be a ‘concerned’ CCR member from another chapter, you would feel no need to place undue blame and delve into issues that are truly chapter-specific, if you actually cared and believed in the ideals that our very organization stands for. I’m sure you have better things to be doing on a Sunday night, but clearly that assumption was ill-placed.

I excuse my hard demeanor to all others having to be a part of this commentary, but I feel the need to spell things out more clearly because apparently I have been misinterpreted. My number one priority, HAS, and always WILL BE, the USC CR chapter and making high-profile events like Karl Rove successful and fruitful for our members and our community.

Nicole, I liked your response and respect your taking ownership for past mistakes. That show courage and maturity.

1. The Secretary (Nicole) took sole control of all accounts and communication, as outlined in the constitution, and The Chair (Ben) felt that this was somehow a threat so he locked everyone out? Paranoid much?

2. The Vice-Chair (Steve) was discussing impeachment with other club officers, again as outlined in the constitution when such questions arise, and although Ben is calling for choice and accountability in his Statewide race he feels it necessary to immediately squash any dialog of his board discussing the consequences of any actions they might take.

3. All the officers have a problem communicating with the Chair and upon seeing this in writing it finally hits him and he decides to, without communication, act and then call for the public ridicule of these people?

4. What is going on with Karl Rove? I go to USC and I have not seen a single advertisement for it and the facebook group had all the information taken out of it when I went back the second time to double check. I have friends who work on the programming board, none of them have heard anything about this nor have they set aside any funds for Karl Rove to come; how much does he cost anyway? I called public safety figuring they would know and none of them had heard of this either? So if Karl Rove is coming they have no place for him to speak, no money to pay him, no security, and no one knows about it, AND the board members have been scrambling to try and get information out of the Chair, with no success. Am I right, did I miss something?

I am not a regular member by any means, in fact, I was at only at one USC College Republican meeting, and Ben Myers stood in front of the whole group and pretended to masturbate, but this is completely unnecessary. Maybe if there was better communication and less disgustingly inappropriate behavior I would have gone to more meetings, but it seems like I still would have no idea with whats going on with Karl Rove.

I would like to make it crystal-clear to everyone involved that I do not care whatsoever about the CCR State Race, nor Revolutionize CCR, etc. I wish the best of luck to all candidates who are running on their respective slates and look forward to witnessing such camaraderie among my peers and colleagues. Though I have no interest or connection to affiliations of the Statewide races, I am heavily concerned with the success of the Karl Rove Event and especially the future of the USC College Republicans. The Karl Rove Event has major implications on the Club’s Image and it is imperative that a positive reflection is attained for the future success and credibility of our group within the political world.

I did NOT say that I had nothing to do with the Facebook and email account issues. I DID remove Ben, Cody, and Steve as admins from our Facebook group. (Like I previously stated in my last post). The reason why I chose to do this: I had members that were emailing me saying that they would like to get involved with USC CRs and for various reasons were unsure how to go about doing that (i.e. class on Tuesday nights, new to USC, etc) and were confused because of the Facebook group lay-out, and having so many admins, as who to directly contact. I figured for the ease of our members, it would be better just to have one person. Considering I am the USC CR Secretary and I am that person that deals with all membership contact and needs to have admin status in order to send out reminder facebook alerts about meetings, I chose to keep myself on as the admin. So that is the Facebook issue. So yes, I did delete Ben, Cody, and Steve as admins, which is I believed at the time to be in the best interest of the club and our members. Mind you this was done two days ago, well before this all started.

As far as the email situation, I DID NOT change the password. Steve was the person who chose that exact password and chose to change it, as can be found in the email that Ben has a link to above. I was aware of the password change, but was NOT the one who made the decision, or made the decision to name the password what it was named.

When Ben called me to ask about the password being changed, I felt it was better that he spoke to Steve, because Steve was the one who made that decision, not myself. I assumed after Ben and I spoke that he contacted Steve, because Ben did not contact me again after that. The account change WAS NOT my decision, nor was it under my control. So that is the email situation.

The actions that were MINE, I take full responsibility for. The Facebook issue that I explain above, was MY actions, and I have always taken responsibility for that. I didn’t realize that being an admin was so important to the others, considering it shouldn’t affect their club positions whatsoever. When I went to re-add Ben as an admin, Ben had decided to take it upon himself to resort to other tactics which I will choose not to mention here out of respect for USC CR and Ben himself.

As far as the email situation, I do not feel it is right to be persecuted for something that I DID NOT do. And I don’t appreciate being judged and called out by people who have no involvement whatsoever in this situation, except to continue to cause problems, when all I have ever wanted is to fix these misunderstandings on my part, and move on to working on Karl Rove, which I believe is the bigger issue at hand.

I am sorry for what this has become. I am sorry to Ben for what he perceived from me as trying to shut him out of Facebook. I cannot speak for anyone else, and anyone else’s intentions. But I can speak for myself, and I am upset about what this has become.

The only thing that I have ever been upset about, is that I was left in the dark for the planning of the Karl Rove event. Being completely bypassed, when my previous work on the McCain campaign shows my dedication and hardworking ways, truly hurt my feelings because it made me believe that Ben did not value my opinions or my work ethic, and it was simply truly disheartening.

So Richard, I do not appreciate your crass commentary on a rather complicated issue that you do not understand. So I would appreciate before jumping to conclusions, to try to comprehend the facts first. Basic human respect.

As far as the “run-around”…. yes I agree that after hearing what was told you, that it was a rather frustrating situation. As you can clearly tell by the email you so fondly decided to forward to everyone, Steve was the one that changed the password… not myself. I figured it would be best for Steve to deal with the password changing issue, and not myself. As far as the Facebook admin status, yes, I did delete all other Facebook admins besides myself. The reason we have a Facebook in the first place, it to have another most accessible venue to inform our members of our meetings and events. The executive board member in charge of those duties is the secretary, not the chairman. The Facebook decision was indeed mine, and I take ownership of that. Mine you, I also de-’admin’ed Steve, so this was not a bias decision, just one of ease for members on who to contact with issues and problems.

One thing I would like to make clear, I have no affiliation with the Revolutionize CCR slate, nor do I really care about it whatsoever. So that is one thing I want to make clear. I have nothing to do with that slate, let alone that ELECTION.

I was NOT the one who drafted that email. Did I believe that you should be impeached and that should be our first course of action? Of course not. I am a senior trying to double major and find a freaking job in this economy, so truthfully even if that is what I wanted to do, impeaching you would be way too much effort for my time frame right now that I would never even attempt to suggest that as a solution to anything.

The thing that has upset me, and truly the ONLY thing that has upset me, is that you kept us so far out of the loop for Karl Rove. When you tell me things like you’ve been having Hillary help you, someone who has barely been affiliated with our organization due to her irrational views and doubtful emotional maturity levels as well as publicly humiliating multiple USC CR members, is what has hurt me the most.

I am extremely excited that Karl Rove is actually coming to USC. When I noticed that there was no Facebook event about it, I figured creating one was in the best interest of building promotion and excitement for KR. I would just like to know why you choose to delete it and what type of “misinformation” you were talking about. The only information listed on that profile was the location, the date, and the time essentially. All of those details were confirmed to me BY YOU, which is why I’ve had trouble comprehending your actions.

I have never had anything against you. My only reaction was being truly disheartened because I felt ignored in the entire planning process, as if you did not value my opinion or work ethic, or trust it. This entire thing (or at least my involvement) has been truly blown out of epic porportion and for that, I am sorry.

Through legal means the elected representatives of the USC College Republicans managed to regain access to both the Facebook group as well the G-mail account. When the e-mails sent without authorization of the president were perused this E-mail dated January 18, 2009 was found.

The E-mail lays out a plan to exclude the elected Chair of the USC College Republicans from the e-mail account and Facebook group. Furthermore, it states a plan for his impeachment and clearly states the grounds for the putsch is his candidacy on a slate opposed to RevolutionizeCCR.

http://easycaptures.com/?a=viewalbum&album_id=299
(e-mail will be forwarded to any who request it)

It is sad that at a time when Republicans should be engaging in a period of reform and introspection, that those who aspire to become the future of the party are resorting to dirty tricks. I call on RevolutionizeCCR to denounce Steve Hagemann and Nicole Halamuda’s actions.