With the election season finally over, we can expect the vicious money-grubbing by politically oriented organizations to stop. The “527” groups will quit funneling conservative dollars to support John McCain, the Barack Obama campaign won’t call for another $20 again – at least for a few years.
Yes, the vampiric diversion of your hard-earned dollars toward political campaigns is finally at an end. With one major exception.
OSPIRG.
The pseudo-environmentalist, pseudo-education advocate Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group leeches more than $100,000 of incidental fees each year – money that, as both the Emerald and the Commentator have reported, is largely channeled off campus. Unlike most student-run programs funded by the ASUO, OSPIRG has to account for very little of its incidental fee spending. Being a “contracted service,” rather than a “student program,” the group avoids the ASUO scrutiny (whatever it amounts to) which most organizations spending your money are subjected to.
Most contracted services, even, are more obvious about how they benefit students. Whether or not you agree with the ASUO’s provision of bus service through its contract with the Lane Transit District, it is clear that students receive a concrete and relatively visible return for what they’re paying. In the case of OSPIRG, the most contact the average student has with the program is the annoying encounter with a fundraiser on the way to an economics midterm. In addition, OSPIRG sometimes addresses classes, soliciting even more volunteers into its shadowy, vague results program.
In the past, I have volunteered with OSPIRG. While there was some good work done, the program’s incredible overhead and fundraising operation clearly consumed most of its resources. It should come as no surprise, then, that more than two-thirds of its ASUO stipend goes not to on-campus work, but to staffers in Portland, Ore.
I have trouble thinking up many more significant examples where that much of an ASUO program’s budget operates outside of Eugene. There are a few, but often this money can easily be accounted for. With OSPIRG, it’s hard to know exactly what it actually does, let alone where it puts our money. Every time an issue becomes major news, whether it be the economic crisis, environmental degradation or some scandal in Washington, OSPIRG inevitably blasts its mailing list with a message claiming some long-term commitment to that very issue and a plea for more money. Because it operates as a “public interest” lobbyist group, its achievements usually consist of such vague accomplishments as “supported a bill to …” or “worked with others to achieve …”
Now, let me be clear. If you want to donate to the harassment squad that trolls our campus on a near-daily basis, that’s perfectly fine with me. Should students be forced to pay a portion of their incidental fee to a program some do not agree with, few actually understand, and almost no one can account for? The answer is clearly no.
There’s some debate whether the ASUO should be funding political campaigns at all. This is a debate worth having. OSPIRG argues that it does disclose its spending clearly in its contract, and that being a contracted service is the best way the group can work effectively for the ASUO. But if we do choose to fund political and environmentalist campaigns with ASUO dollars, it’d be nice if they operate as a fairly nearby student program and can itemize what they’re doing – a classification OSPIRG has resisted in the past.
This year, for the first time in a while, we have an ASUO executive committed to ending this abuse. Portland State University defunded the organization last fall. I recommend all students join in vigilance on this issue and do again what we tried to do in 1998: Get OSPIRG’s racket off the ASUO books.
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