The ASUO executive will not hire a new Oregon Student Association campus organizer and will instead redirect the funds used to pay an organizer to create an internship program run out of the University’s Holden Leadership Center.
ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz said the move will shift the focus of the ASUO’s internship program from learning how to lobby elected officials to a broader array of leadership training.
It will also leave the ASUO without a full-time organizer during a presidential election year when Dotters-Katz has pledged to register 10,000 new voters. And it will leave the campus without a full-time organizer during a state legislative session.
OSA is a statewide advocacy organization that was started in 1975 to “represent, serve, and protect the collective interests of students in postsecondary education in Oregon,” according to its website.
ASUO interns were previously trained by the OSA organizer and worked with members of the ASUO’s professional staff. The internship program will now be overseen by a Graduate Teaching Fellow who will report to Holden Leadership Center Director John Duncan.
Dotters-Katz said the program’s focus will shift from lobbying to a “wide array of topics from leadership development to issues of privilege and diversity, effective lobbying and grassroots campaign tactics.”
He said OSA is “a lobbyist organization,” and the Holden Leadership Center program will be “based on leadership development and youth empowerment.”
“The amount of resources that John Duncan has created through the leadership program will be extremely beneficial to this program,” Dotters-Katz said. “I think John Duncan is one of the hardest-working and most dedicated faculty members on this campus when it comes to working with students.”
Former OSA organizer Tom Hojem, who former ASUO Finance Coordinator Matt Rose said did amazing work lobbying the state legislature, left his post to become OSA’s legislative director.
OSA Executive Director Tamara Henderson said the organization had begun a process of searching for someone to replace Hojem at the University when she called the ASUO executive and was told they “would no longer be utilizing a campus organizer.”
The ASUO pays membership dues in OSA and, until now, paid for a campus organizer. The Programs Finance Committee approved more than $109,000 for OSA on Feb. 7.
“Clearly if this decision goes on there will be some change” in the contract, Henderson said.
Dotters-Katz said the organizer salary will be used in a variety of ways.
“The resources that have been opened up by eliminating the organizer position will not be completely exhausted with the leadership program,” he said, noting that he is “prepared to dedicate resources to marginalized communities on this campus.”
Social justice organizations Oregon Students of Color Coalition and the Oregon Student Equal Rights Alliance worked closely with Hojem, and the executive will have to pick up that slack as well.
“As a member of OSCC, the great thing about having an organizer on campus was preparation for Capitol visits,” OSCC member Rose said. The campus organizer also helped OSCC run voter registration drives in communities of color, as well as advised the ASUO on media relations and implementing policy objectives, Rose said.
Henderson said campus organizers also helped the ASUO executive “lay out a direction and a vision for the year.”
It is yet to be seen whether the University will maintain its presence in the state legislature, Rose said.
“It really depends on what the ASUO administration does to fill that void. We’re losing an institutional pillar,” Rose said. “I have never been on campus when we did not have an organizer.”
Dotters-Katz said he will ensure both organizations have the resources they need.
“As ambitious a voter registration goal as I have created, it clearly would have benefited me to have a campus organizer,” he said. The change is not about his own convenience, he said, but creating “a new generation of leaders on this campus.”
Dotters-Katz said there were two interns during spring term and his goal will be to have 20 to 30 interns per term.
“Tom Hojem did an incredible job as a campus organizer. And I think it speaks to his talent that he could work so hard in so many different ways, but there’s no way you could say his position wasn’t stressed. What’s the core issue of that problem? Why is there such a void of student leaders on this campus?” Dotters-Katz asked rhetorically.
He said the problem is that students have not been empowered to follow their own goals.
Henderson said the move will not change OSA’s involvement with the University.
“(We are) doing everything we can to represent all students. What it changes is the access for students to have a full time person on campus dedicated to serving any mission,” she said.
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ASUO alters relationship with student association
Daily Emerald
July 4, 2008
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