By Ed Keenan
At the end of this year, Paul Felstein—aka the Weasel—will be gone once and for all from Ryerson politics. The jobs of news editors, editorial writers and political cartoonists in the Ryerson media will be a lot harder, for Felstein has been the surest of the sure-fire campus political targets for well over four years.
Why? Because Felstein is a bad political animal, graced with the dangerous combination of underhandedness and ambition that gives politicians and lawyers a bad name. He has never actually been elected by the student body to be anything more important than a seat on the RSU Board of Directors, yet his persistence and political scheming have put him at the centre of nearly every big-time scandal to strike the RSU in the past three years.
For those fortunate enough not to have been paying attention the first time around, a quick re-cap of The Weasel’s long and sordid political career at Ryerson:
February 1992: After sitting on the RSU Board of Directors and the Board of Governors, Felstein ran for RSU v-p education. He lost by six votes to Boscoe Cheung and called for a re-count. After the re-count, Felstein was still declared a loser. He was, however, subsequently re-elected to his seat on the Board and appointed external affairs commissioner.
November 1992: Brandishing accusations of mismanagement, Felstein, V-P Education Boscoe Cheung and Health Commissioner Michael Johnson tried to impeach RSU President Danielle Holmes. When their impeachment motion was defeated by the Board of Directors, all three vowed to quit. While his two co-accusers welled up their dignity and resigned, our Paul back-pedaled furiously and tried to seat himself in the newly vacant v-p education office. The RSU opted to let the position remain vacant rather than hand it over to Felstein.
February 1993: The Weasel ran for RSU president, and despite beautiful posters and high name recognition (or maybe because of it), placed a distant third behind Bob Crane.
February 1994: Felstein resurfaced as the Chief Returning Officer of the RSU elections. The election, under his guidance, became a farcical debacle that undermined the legitimacy of the entire RSU executive.
On election day 1994, the business building polling station had to close because it ran out of ballots and, in contravention of RSU bylaws, the Jorgenson Hall polling station was left attended by only one poll clerk at several times throughout the day. These undisputed violations of election procedures turned out to be the least of the Weasel’s mismanagement problems.
When it came time to count ballots, Felstein and the rest of the Election Procedures Committee were struck by a sudden inability to perform basic mathematical functions. After counting the votes, the lone scrutineer protested that the numbers didn’t add up. Felstein paid him no mind. He trotted into The Edge and declared Mike D’Angelo president-elect. When a student journalist pointed out that there seemed to be a problem with the calculations, the EPC did a quick recount and declared Paul Cheevers the winner.
Later that week, Felstein and the EPC decided that Mr. Cheevers (who merely by coincidence was opposed to nearly everything that the RSU majority was in favor of) had over-spent his election budget. The Weasel told Cheevers in a private meeting that the EPC was planning to disqualify him, and offered to pay his campaign receipts if he would keep his mouth shut and step down for “personal reasons.” Cheevers declined the payola and was later disqualified by the board in a controversial battle.
Next, amid accusations of election procedural problems and calls for another election, CRO Felstein declared that in lieu of any specific RSU policy, the EPC would follow well-established Miss America Pageant policy and give the runner-up the crown—voila, Mike D’Angelo is president. Both Cheevers and John-Paris Phillips contacted their lawyers about suing the living shit out of the RSU. Felstein is quoted as saying “the integrity of the election was fine and fair.”
1994-1995: Despite his record, Felstein managed to be appointed Chair of the RSU Board of Directors. He stuck his snout back into the election process as advisor to new CRO Andrea Webb. He distinguished himself as Chair of the Board by frequently telling directors that the Chair did not recognize them and that they were out of order.
And now he’s leaving.
The truth is, I have never felt guilty for taking shots at Felstein because he comes off as a shameless snake-oil salesman. Paul has told me that he doesn’t understand the Weasel nickname. “I don’t look anything like a weasel,” he has said. For the record: Weasels are rodents notorious for cunning and maneuvering; they’re sneaky and devious. In analogous terms, the weasel is a hybrid of the rat and the fox.
Let me spell it out for you, Paul: The nickname refers to your actions, not your face.
Felstein is going, But the ugly cloud he cast over the political landscape of the RSU will take a long time to blow over.
Paul, we hardly knew ya’, but we knew ya’ all too well.
Leave a Reply