SBG: A Short History

Students for Better Government (SBG) is a student organization formed by Chris Olson. Chris Olson failed to be elected Student Trustee candidate in 2008, so he teamed up with Joel Ebert with whom he co-founded another student organization, SPEAK.

Chris and Joel also worked together as writers and editors at The Chicago Flame and authored many articles together relating to USG matters:

4/18/08 - Upcoming student election hopes for increased turnout by Joel Ebert
4/21/08 - Negative ads, complaints surround trustee election by Joel Ebert
4/28/08 - Controversial election held no hearings by Joel Ebert
11/3/08 - Questioning Winters’s judgement by Chris Olson
10/6/09 - USG president resigns by Joel Ebert and Chris Olson
12/8/09 - USG deceives student body by Joel Ebert, Chris Olson, and Sean Murray
1/12/09 - USG spends almost third of budget on comedy show by Joel Ebert
2/23/09 - Student Trustee resigns, replacement process begins by Joel Ebert
3/2/09 - New trustee appointed, confirmation pending – ‘Most qualified’ student passed over

Notice that all these articles are highly critical. Many of them are blatantly inaccurate (USG did not actually spend 1/3 of its budget on a comedy show). As you can see, Sean Murray (another member of SPEAK), also joined Olson and Ebert in criticizing USG. Sean Murray would later become the President of SBG. Sean would later go on to describe this practice of not getting involved with but criticizing an institution only to later swooping in to “save” it with these words:

(from Politics and Perversion: A Case study by Sean Murray)

“Therefore, the burden in this common political scenario always falls upon the citizen, or in this case the student. They should always be suspicious and informed about their government, but also realize that many are waiting in the wings to play the savior against these evil politicians. Yet often, the superficial attempt to expose is the greatest mask for deceit.”

Had Sean written these words one year prior, the would have been an appropriate description of his own organization, SBG, because that is exactly what they did.

Together, Chris Olson, Joel Ebert, Sean Murray, Bernard Mariano (Chicago Flame Photographer, SPEAK VP), Heather Kaufman (Chicago Flame Staff Writer, former SPEAK VP), Geoff Berkheimer(Chicago Flame Staff Writer), and Sara Agate, Danielle Schubert, Cecilia Real, and Bernadette Casaclang (Mariano’s girlfriend) formed SBG, and a political slate of candidates to run in the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) elections. With the exception of Kaufman, who had just joined USG weeks prior to the election cycle, not a single one of these students had any prior experience serving in government. Yet, their election campaign was one in which they portrayed themselves to be the saviors of the students of UIC.

From their campaign website:

“UIC as it is, is not UIC as it must be.”

To quote, Geoff Berkheimer in a mass email he sent out over Facebook:

“Why is Students for Better Government the bomb? Look, there’s not much I can say here that won’t sound political, and I realize that’s going to turn a lot of you off. Bottom line is that I know for CERTAIN, that we are the only candidates who give a shit about you the students.”

On April 16, 2009 every single SBG candidate won election in the USG elections. This victory was short lived, however, when the Election Planning Commission found SBG members guilty of multiple counts of lying, policy violations, and election rules violations to include setting up “fake” voting booths all over campus and bribing students to vote while instructing them to vote for their slate. This led to the complete disqualification of the SBG slate. SBG’s worst crimes during the campain, to include theft of University property, and soliciting votes in the dorms after midnight went unpunished.

Megan Calcaterra, who to this day denies being a “member” of SBG, campaigned vigorously for SBG and even set up and ran her own unofficial voting booth where she distributed fliers for SBG isntructing voters how to vote. Nate Will, was the campaign manager for SBG, and was caught stealing hundreds of color photocopies from the Residents Hall Association office (an official University office). Jinna Holt, also acted as a campaign manager for SBG, and together with Bernard Mariano ran a unofficial voting both where they solicited votes while bribing students with candy.

SBG’s use of deception began long before the elections were officially underway, though. One of their earliest notable acts was to create a Facebook group called “Stopping the Leaky Madness!” in which they claimed it was USG’s responsibility to make sure a leaking fire hydrant outside Stephenson Hall should be repaired. USG had addressed the issue weeks prior to the appearance of this Facebook group and had received word from the University that the hydrant would be fixed over Spring Break to avoid water outages.

When members of USG tried to post this information to SBG’s group, their posts were deleted, and they were banned from the group. SBG members posted warnings of “safety threats” due to the leaking hydrant (which were later debunked by the local Fire Chief), and brought the City Water Management officials out to inspect the hydrant (even though this had already been done).

As originally scheduled by USG, the hydrant was finally fixed over Spring Break and all of SBG showed up during Spring Break in their Sunday best to get a picture in front of the hydrant and proclaim this a victory for their organization, and a failure on behalf of USG. Later, this group’s membership was used to distribute campaign messages for SBG during the USG election – something that many suspect was the group’s purpose from the very beginning.

After being disqualified from the USG Elections, Chris Olson led the group to appeal the decision made by the Election Planning Commission. The conviction was not overturned, but Berkheimer, Schubert, Agate,Real, and Casaclang were allowed to take office if they took mandatory ethics classes. Ebert, Mariano, and Murray were not reinstated.

Over the summer session, SBG members in USG moved quickly to appoint Ebert and Calcaterra onto the assembly. SBG members also began to pressure non-members into quitting USG, and one-by-one they were replaced by friends and associates of SBG members. In the fall of 2009, finding constitutionally mandated “constituency groups” to be too restrictive on her recruitment efforts, Megan Calcaterra pushed through a suspension of the rules effectively removing the limitations placed on the USG Assembly that required 50% of its members to represent various groups of students on campus. It was no coincidence that shortly after this rule was suspended, Sean Murray was appointed into the assembly.

Then, just two weeks later, Calcaterra again began to push for resignations of non-SBG members and former political rivals, this time threatening Murray’s former opponent and the man who took office after he was disqualified, Kevin Lee. Calcaterra told Lee that if he did not resign, she would impeach him. On Thursday, October 22, after Lee refused to submit to her demands, Calcaterra proceeded with impeachment charges against, Lee.

This impeachment was actually a concession for SBG, after they failed to successfully impeach Damian Wolak the USG President. Wolak received high accolades, from the USG Advisor, Dean Malcolm Smithand in a heated debate, SBG members realized that they would not be able to successfully impeach Wolakso they backed down from their threats. It only took them two weeks to begin threatening Lee.

Interestingly enough, one of their main complaints against Wolak and Lee is that they do not attend the full USG General meetings. Over the summer, USG meetings were scheduled by a vote from the Assembly (mostly SBG members by this time). First, everyone told the Assembly when they could not meet. Both Wolakand Lee told the Assembly they had class on Thursday evenings, and asked that the USG General meetings be held at their traditional time, Wednesday’s at 5pm. The time chosen for the meetings was Thursdays at 5pm. Therefore, Wolak has been skipping the first half of his night class, and Lee has been coming to the meetings to give his weekly reports, but then leaves for his night class so that he can take notes for Wolak. In other words, these impeachment charges were planned from the beginning.

More to come as the history unfolds…