Portland State University Student Body President Ryan Soto is withholding over $100,000 of his school’s contribution to the Oregon Students Association until it agrees to add a general assembly with proportional representation. In the proposal, OSU would have seven members in the assembly, U of O six, PSU five and the other school would have one – it comes out to one rep per 2,500 full-time students. Specific duties of the assembly will be negotiated. Soto’s proposal says the assembly would choose the board members – there would still be two members from each school – recommend lobbying issues and perhaps set membership dues.

ASUO President and OSA Board of Directors Chairman Emily McLain is against the proposal, wanting to keep the coalition form of the OSA where everyone has the same voice – though I believe there is some sadistic hierarchy within the OSA works (any word on fight club lately?).

From the Emerald:

Soto said it’s not fair that PSU, Oregon State University and the University of Oregon pay the majority of the total OSA dues but each of those three major institutions has the same amount of say as the smaller rural campuses that have far fewer students and provide less funding.

“We wanted to make sure we were looking at the model, trying to understand why we pay this much but we’re getting the same amount of voice that, say, Eastern (Oregon University) does,” Soto said.

The OC’s position, of course, is to get rid of the OSA entirely. Students need to have a voice in legislature, I just believe it is wrong for one organization to monopolize the student voice. Take the Oregon Student Equal Rights Alliance, an OSA affiliate board, for example. How fair is it that Oregon students are forced to fund an organization that lobbies the legislature to allow gays to marry. Isn’t that an infringement of some students’ rights who morally object to those domestic partnerships? Speaking of the OSA affiliate boards, from the PSU Vanguard:

Representatives from both affiliate boards of OSA, the Oregon Students of Color Coalition and the Oregon Student Equal Rights Alliance, spoke at the meeting about problems they had with the proposal. They said they were concerned that they were not referenced in the proposal and not invited to the meeting where it was proposed.

Also those representatives questioned whether the general assembly membership, which would be appointed by each school’s student body president, would be made up of a diverse mix of people.

I’m going to talk to Soto over the weekend and should have an update on Monday.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 11:03 by Ossie 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.