News:

EUGENE – The ASUO Student Senate adjourned abruptly Wednesday night after dispensing with four sizable special requests. The adjournment left more than half the agenda untouched, including the appointment of a new representative to the University Senate and the reapportionment of academic senate seats.

After quickly dispensing with a $44 request from the European Student Association, the senate moved on to a $2,900 request from the Women’s Center, the first of three from the group scheduled for the evening, to help fund the Fashion Resistance to Militarism Fashion Show. Some senators were concerned with the size of this expenditure, and a reduced amount of $1,418 was approved unanimously.

The Women’s Center then presented its second request, for $1,000 to send two staff members to the Young Feminist Leadership Conference. Sens. Max Barkley, was uneasy that the funds requested would be used to primarily benefit the two individuals attending the conference, a concern shared by Sen. Evan Thomas, amongst others. Barkley was also concerned about the size of the request, and suggested ways to reduce the amount, saying, “When it comes to the flight, I don’t think its fair for us to pay for more than half of that.”

Sen. Marissa Garcia, however, felt the group was being given undue scrutiny, saying, “Why is this different than any other conference?” After further discussion, the body rejected an appropriation of $700 and Thomas moved to end discussion. There was not the requisite two-thirds support for abandoning the matter, and a final amount of $654 was suggested and approved. The Women’s Center’s third request, another $1,000 for conference attendance, was held over until next week.

After a short recess, the National Broadcasting Society appeared to request $5,000 to send a number of its members to a professional conference. Thomas was pleased that attendance was open to the entire student body, but questions about the group’s financial status pervaded the conversation. Research by a couple of Senators revealed that the group’s accounts with the ASUO had been frozen when a representative of the group failed to regularly attend Programs Council Meetings, a requirement of all programs. Nevertheless, after imploring the group not to spend the money on food, the request was approved.

The Survival Center, joined by ASUO Sustainability Coordinator Louisa De Heer, then presenter an $8,500 request, which was amended to $12,000, to bring author Naomi Klein to campus for Earth Day. Sen. Ian Fielding was uneasy that the event had only been envisioned a couple weeks ago and concerned about appropriating such a large amount out of a shrinking Surplus account. “I worry that we’re going to run out of money,” Fielding said.

The presenters impressed the urgency of the request on the Senators, saying they needed the money to be able to sign a contract to book Klein before another campus or organization did. Nevertheless, a number of Senators discussed tabling the matter for next week, which was eventually moved and rejected, leading to the approval of an $8,050 expenditure.

After a short recess to pause before the consideration of the second half of the agenda, Sen. Brian Powell suddenly moved to adjourn. When Sen. Zachary Stark-MacMillan ruled that there be discussion of the motion, his ruling was challenged and overruled. As quickly as it had begun, the clamor was over and the meeting had been stopped in its tracks. No committee or officer updates were provided, and the Senate has not yet announced when or if it will be considering the items abandoned by the adjournment, including the selection of a new representative to the University Senate.

Stats and Opinion after the jump.

Stats:

Meeting Duration: 191 Minutes (Two recesses)

Money Allocated From Surplus: $15, 572

Not Present: Hochstatter

Resignation Count: 7

Opinion:

On the Cover It Live feed, one reader likened the Senate’s circular argument to a NASCAR race. If that is so, the end of the meeting would be like the race being stopped halfway through because it was getting dark and they didn’t have any lighting at the racetrack. After this piece is posted, I will be writing Powell a thank you card.

During the proceedings, Sen. Kristina Harding asked what the difference was between the conference funding requests from the Women’s Center and the NBS. My answer would be to point to the number of people in the room: NBS was taking a whole slew of people to learn about career opportunities and talk to notables in their industry. The Women’s Center was sending a couple of its own staff to DC.

Now I realize that the two groups will do pretty much the same thing while at their conferences. But Sen. Laura Hinman was very poignant when she said, “I’m not comfortable that it was only spoken about with staff or people who do not go to our university.” I’m not comfortable with the level of promotion that occurred. While the presenters described their efforts to reach out to the campus community, I felt they were not sufficient. While Garcia had a point in saying, “It ends up being two staff people going for a reason,” this should not be the default position for programs that are funded to benefit the campus as a whole.

Additionally, it should be noted that while the NBS request was five times the amount of the initial Women’s Center request, it was only about 50 percent of the total cost of the conference for the 16 students that will be attending. The Women’s Center’s other fundraising sources combined to make up just more than a third of the total amount of the total cost. Furthermore, all the sources listed in their special request form were fee funded. So unless outside help is sought, students will be footing the entire bill for the Women’s Center conference. Not cool, guys.

Also not cool: Skipping PCMs. Seriously.

I’m glad that De Heer is getting a lot done in her new position as sustainability coordinator. But it seems to me that, on top of how much it cost to hire her, whenever she is getting something done, it seems to cost students a lot of money. I don’t have any scientific backing for this, but it’s just a trend I’m picking up on. Is it real, and will it continue? We shall see.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 08:08 by Rockne Andrew Roll and is filed under ASUO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.