Two students run for state office
By Eileen Cheong, Staff Writer
While other students their age are interning at campaign offices, Jen Rog and Mike Farrar are getting their names on the ballots. As representatives of the Libertarian Party, Rog, a photography major at SUNY New Paltz, is running for state Senate, and Farrar, an economics major, is running for state Assembly. The party they are representing is considered even smaller than the Green Party and Rog is probably the first Liberalist to even get her name on the senate ballot.
Rog and Farrar both feel that students should be especially concerned about issues such as the Higher Education Act, marijuana drug laws, abortion and lowering the drinking age. Even if young people don't see how politics directly affect their lives or dislike politics altogether, Rog believes that they must at least acknowledge the fact that there is a group of other people controlling the laws that we must live by.
Rog said she doesn't want to have a political career.
"I think politics stink but someone has to do this dirty job," Rog said. "We need to not only push ourselves but to push the fact that there are third parties out there that have people worth voting for," Rog said. "In my opinion this isn't about my own political campaign, it's about pushing the issues and not about the slandering you see on television."
"If you don't like old men controlling everything, you have to get involved in the system to change it," Rog said.
Rog cited an election in town a year and a half ago for a judge position where Green Party candidate Cathy Keely lost by 200 votes.
"Now 200 students could've easily gotten up and got their butts to the polls but only 90 students voted in that election," Rog said. "We could've had a Green Party judge, a progressive person who would have had more compassion for students."
Farrar hopes running for office will give people the initiative to do something instead of sitting at their desk and talking about it. "I want people to start talking about other resources," he said. Farrar explained that hemp oil can be used instead of diesel without any modifications and although it is more difficult to refine, hemp is an everlasting resource that can be grown twice a year while diesel is taken out of our earth and cannot be replaced.
Farrar is also vice president of NORML and has been on the Student Association programming board for a semester. Farrar wants to reduce the drinking age to 18 again.
"If you can go to war and look at X-rated videos, you should certainly be allowed to drink." He also feels strongly about repealing the taxes on cigarettes. "It's not fair to smokers to be charged exorbitant taxes it's uncalled for," he said. "I'd like to see the tax not as a pawn to be increased every year."
"I'm running because there is no other local student running who's pro-hemp," Farrar said. "I'm someone other than Kevin Cahill, who just because he came on campus and said he was pro-hemp, got elected but didn't do anything about a recent bill legalizing marijuana for medical users."
Both Farrar and Rog strongly advocate the benefits of hemp as an excellent source for cosmetics, paper, clothing, food, industrial fuel and many other vital products used everyday.
On a federal level there were 700,000 marijuana arrests last year and 80 percent of those arrests were for personal use, meaning people were in possession of a small amount.
"It's a waste of police effort, it's a waste of money and there's really no reason why it shouldn't be regulated just like alcohol and tobacco. Prohibition of alcohol never worked. It created a lot of crime, which is what all the drug wars are about," Rog said.
Rog said that allowing farmers to grow hemp would help keep small local farmers in business. More local farms would counter the monopoly agri-business holds over the hemp market.
"Right now we're giving Canada and Europe millions that could be invested right here because a lot of companies import hemp," Rog said.
After being involved in NORML and other political organizations, Rog began to notice that people didn't want to listen to people picketing or join rallies about issues they were not concerned with. After she registered to vote at 18 on campus where she saw a lot of activism going on, Rog soon learned about the Green Party and their concerns for the environment and decided to help them gain 50,000 votes to put a Green member on the ballot for governor. A friend, who wanted to run for office but could not because she wouldn't be 18 by the time the election ended, proposed that Farrar and Rog run instead. Being aware of their power to change what they felt was wrong, they accepted the challenge.
Rog wants to make sure that New York state remains pro-choice, keeps up the good trend of providing equal rights for people of non-heterosexual orientation and see reform of the drug laws.
Ninety-five percent of those arrested under the Rockefeller drug laws are either black or Latino, and 13 percent of them make up the drug-using population, according to Rog. There's a large coalition of former correctional officers, priests and all kinds of ordinary people in favor of abolishing these drug laws, she said. Rog added that most nationwide surveys show that at least 50 percent of the population wants marijuana to be either decriminalized or legalized so their tax dollars and cops are not tied up in it, she said.
"It would also free up the courts and free up the police who spend half their time dealing with drugs when they could be solving rape and murder cases," Rog said.
Rog will be holding a fundraiser at a local bar and trying to get her voice heard everywhere on TV and radio, concentrating her effort in New Paltz where she hopes to gain the most support. Other than SUNY New Paltz, there are four other colleges in her district, three of which are community colleges. Farrar and Rog have no outside funding for their campaigns. The Libertarian Party does not have a ballot line and is mainly grassroots, relying mostly on physical manpower.
Farrar said, "It's our own attempt to try to change politics from a citizen's point of view. This is my first real political experience of what I think should be done and hopefully I'll take some votes home with me."
Farrar's family is enthusiastic about his campaign for assembly. They hope he succeeds, but at the same time they worry that if he wins the election, he'll stay in politics for the rest of his life.
"It doesn't take much effort and we all need to just grab a friend when we're going to [vote] and be open minded to politics and to people trying to change its very negative image," Rog said.
