Revelations

Originally written January 30, 2007

Nothing could phase me in that perfect moment together, just me and dreams of grandeur dancing in my head. Perhaps a mischievous grin made its way through the clenched teeth, but there was no emotion behind those eyes. I had ice water running through my veins. Satisfied with what I had found in those bank statements, I sat back among the crowds of the student union, and at that moment I knew the meaning of it all. I began to silently judge him, and prepare for the next phase of the plan. While there are certainly far more deviant stories we have locked up, tonight I light a candle in our church to allow this ghost to go on home.

Without an army by your side, what chance of success does your coup have? We made a deal, where none of us would report to the press, police or university that our illustrious chairman had stolen two thousand dollars from the club. I wanted to make him an example of what I would do if I was in charge, that the lawyer among us would be the new sheriff in town. His friends though wanted to give him a quiet exit in return for the full reimbursement of the money.

Project mayhem was going exactly as Matt and I projected it six months before on that fateful rainy April afternoon. Justin’s fall from grace was my ascension to the throne. That day we had scripted out our plan of everything I had to do to make things right, and while not every last one of them occurred, things had a habit of falling into place for us.

Three days after the revelations of the theft were made known to the executive board, it was front page news in the campus newspaper. Throughout the article, I was quoted as implementing the new constitution that I had written to provide for greater checks on abuse of power. The sheriff riding into town on his white horse. But if we had agreed not to take the story public, then who emailed the campus newspaper with the story, resulting in the end of the line politically and academically for our former chairman.

Without an army, there is no coup. Moments after I had collected my thoughts in that student union, sorting through all the bank receipts, I called Matt, I called Jordan, and I let them know I was about to change the game. People suspected it was me, or Reba, Jack, Dennis, George, but no, it came down to Matt, Jordan, and Sean. A lot of people knew, a lot of people had incentive, and believe me I wanted to make him pay with his reputation as well. Do I have any sympathy for him…he had to leave his job, leave school, leave politics…do I think about how my power play for respect on a state level, am I concerned that by informing the powers that be of the time of what I had done might have caused the story to be made public?

I neither admit nor deny that my actions here were just or improper…I may have acted in my own self-serving interests, but I believed I was acting in the best interests of everyone involved. I light this candle to relieve myself of the burden, for I would never lie to you here, and I can walk away with an honest reflection on that time. I don’t know who sold our organization out and informed the press, but I am thankful to them nonetheless. Without this deception, without the momentum I carried from this moment on, my story would have ended far earlier, and I would never have become all that we are today.

Maybe I would never have gone any further than a club treasurer in politics. Maybe I would have walked away from it all and taken a different path through law school. I would have never gone out of town that weekend in June for the national convention. And maybe that weekend I would have watched the Cubs with my grandfather, and maybe I would have seen something was wrong with him that Saturday night. Maybe I would have been there with him before he went up those stairs. Maybe he would be here today if I had never answered that phone call from Matt, if I had never told people about Justin, if I had never challenged the legitimacy of that final election…if I had just let the past slide.

The coup succeeded, I got everything I ever wanted and was given the chance to walk away at the top of my game. What do I have to show for it now?