The first Ol’ Dirty of the year is out today, with a sexy new redesign and a ridiculous editorial titled, “Summer Senate deserves payment for work.”

Though the go-ahead was granted, the votes were so narrow, and the debate was it such a deadlock, that the senators decided not to file the paperwork to receive the stipend.

They figured it was in the best interest of the group to leave the money alone. They agreed to meet twice a month, unpaid, through the entire summer.

Though their decision was morally sound, it was very risky.

In the past, summer senates were not paid. Sen. Jeremy Blanchard said this lack of pay caused them to struggle to accomplish things.

…

The pay was, by no means, 11 senators asking for a raise, or demanding money for a new pair of shoes.

Rather, it was a way to pressure the summer senators to attend and do work worthy of students’ mandatory fee money.

Without payment, the resulting summer senate was clumsy at best.

“It went pretty quickly to a fail,” Lange said. Summer senate met quorum less half of the time.

Senators often left early, skipping out because of other summer time commitments. Some even ignored repeated texts and e-mails from other senators that questioned their whereabouts.

I would like to make a correction to the Editorial Board’s statement: The ASUO summer senate this year met quorum ZERO times. Because there were no official resignations from summer senate, every meeting was invalid. Oh, and when they did meet, they didn’t take minutes — at least I haven’t seen any. Last year’s summer senate at least had legitimate meetings, and — WOW — didn’t get paid.

Additionally, there’s this fancy document called the Stipend Model that most ASUO folks don’t understand and thus choose to ignore. This document outlines who gets stipends in great detail, from how much per month to how many months per year for each specific program. Senators would do well to look at documents that pertain to them, even if they’re difficult to read and understand. Stipend model outlines basic student senator stipends as $150/month for 9 months (Sept-May or Oct-June, depending), with NO money for the summer. These are things to keep in mind.

Finally, there’s this from the ASUO Constitution:

4.6 Conflict of interest prohibited. No member holding an elected position on the Student Senate, the ASUO Programs Finance Committee, the Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee, Department Finance Committee or the EMU Board may vote on the budget of any ASUO or EMU program in which they will be holding a paid position during the year the fiscal budget is in effect. This section shall be construed so as to prohibit conduct that creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, as well as an actual conflict of interest.

This would disallow the ASUO Senate from voting on anything having to do with their own budget — including summer stipends.

The end of the article is my favorite. Lots of LOLz to be sure, but this takes the cake:

This year’s summer senate was a poor showing, but it did manage to accomplish a couple goals; including establishing a table at Intermingle on Sept. 24 from 5 p.m. to midnight, approving various special requests, and creating a project committee designed to scout the campus for concerns and issues to be addressed fall term.

HOORAY, you got a table at Intermingle! Clearly we should be evading rules to pay you for all your hard work.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 12:02 by Lyzi Diamond and is filed under ASUO, Stupid, Worthless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.