Opinion: I don’t know if you’ve heard of it — it’s pretty underground. Definitely not a 17 million dollar campus organization or anything.
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As election season for UO’s student government, the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (known, if at all, as ASUO), wraps up this week, more and more students are becoming aware of the fact we have a student government! If this is news to you, fear not, you are in great company.
In fact, the first reaction many students have when asked about ASUO is to ask questions in return: What is that? Isn’t that like, student government? The EMU people?
Thankfully, many debriefings of the group’s functions and responsibilities can be foundonline. Perhaps more important than the questions being asked by students, though, are the ones ASUO members should be asking themselves. A question all ASUO members now need to answer: How can we improve transparency in our group?
A more welcoming ASUO office space, increased visitation with student groups, active social media presence, increased accessibility for interviews, a diligent press team, improved campus advertising and more outreach events all could help. For now, though, this lack of transparency and awareness between ASUO and the student body, and within the group itself, remains very apparent to members and students alike. Until action is taken, plans to increase awareness and improve ASUO’s relations with the students they’re meant to serve are just that — plans.
More enticing than the group’s unfulfilled promises, though, were tales of its coercion, cyberbullying, confrontations of alleged sexual relations between current members and prospective candidates, high tensions, heated debates and dissolved campaigns. One presidential candidate, a former Senate President, had even promised paid positions to friends if elected, and required them to sign NDAs to intimidate them into keeping this bribery secret.
What became clear in this year’s election was that ASUO’s innerworkings more closely resemble reality television than that of a professional, devoted government staff. Perhaps students would similarly find ASUO drama more exciting than their weekly finance updates.
In addition to these updates, the ASUO news page offers… nothing since June 2021. I guess I, like much of the student body, am confused about what exactly ASUO members are being paid upwards of $700 a month to do.
Senate meeting minutes show a similar sense of uncertainty. With time constraints, looming deadlines and inability to agree, ASUO members seem to move in progression-less circles at times, less in the polarized way of our own federal government and more in the ill-informed, confused way of students with little direction.
When students are elected into ASUO, a summer of sporadic training sessions ends just as quickly as they begin and new members are essentially thrown into budgeting processes. More influential than these decisions are the new members themselves, many who simply follow the lead of friends or more experienced members. There are no measures ensuring that members truly have any understanding of the policies they vote on, and some members will receive their monthly stipends with little to no engagement with the group at all.
Let’s put this money in perspective. For a UO Dining Services student worker to make what former ASUO President Isaiah Boyd made monthly in his attempts to hand over student control of the EMU budget, they would need to work around 30 hours a week.
And we wonder why Bullseye Tacos is never open.
As ASUO continues to oversee how 17 million dollars of our tuition money is spent, we in the know can only hope that student groups’ needs are being met to the best of the group’s ability. Of course, this is far from an easy task, as ASUO is responsible for well over 200 student groups — including the well-compensated ASUO branches themselves, club sports and student publications. (I don’t know about you, fellow Emerald staffers, but I’m feeling well-prepared for a notoriously underpaid career in journalism.) My advice to those in a poorly-funded group? Get involved.
Students should, and need to, be active participants on campus to ensure that groups like ASUO are held accountable and also ensure that their own needs are being met. Attend open meetings, issue complaints, pay attention to ASUO updates, reach out to members with questions, talk to your friends. If something on campus upsets you, if ASUO policies upset you, do something about it. Care about where your money is going, and better yet, run for an elected seat.
Lack of competition in ASUO elections has been a common trend in recent years. Last year’s election saw former incumbent president Isaiah Boyd run unopposed. This election, however, saw a much larger group of presidential candidates. Running for ASUO should be a competitive process that encourages students to tap into their more ambitious nature and explore student government as a melding of professionalism and college life. While these roles should be taken seriously, ASUO elections should not encourage corruption, immaturity or exclusion.
ASUO must overcome this culture of exclusion in specific if it truly wants to achieve greater transparency between themselves and the student body. Seats cannot continue to be promised or gate-kept by lack of awareness. If you ask most ASUO members how they became involved with the group, chances are high they heard about it from someone already involved.
With student awareness already growing in lieu of these past weeks, elected President Luda Isakharov and Vice President Kavi Shrestha hope to engage more students and take on the responsibility of making students care about their student government. “We need to rethink the way we’re informing students,” Isakharov said. “We need to be meeting students where they’re at [and be] changing the paradigm of how we communicate.”
The pair appeared authentic and transparent in their acknowledgement of ASUO’s history of secrecy, cliqueness and submission. “I think the justification has always kind of been like, ‘this is the way it always is,’” Shresta said. “I just don’t see that as a great answer. I think there’s a way to reimagine things.”
The reimagining of ASUO and its institutional memory is no easy undertaking, but Isakharov and Shresta understand its necessity. It’s worth hoping that foundational changes are implemented that lay out the groundwork for the group to, eventually, become one that students actually want to engage with. Until then, both ASUO members and students alike must work toward making ASUO a student government that serves and represents us all.
