Sam Dotters-Katz was elected ASUO president promising to bring an everyday student’s perspective to the office. On Monday, he will be an everyday student again when his term in office ends.
Dotters-Katz and Vice President Johnny Delashaw entered office with no prior experience in student government. “The learning curve, even for someone involved, is extremely steep,” Dotters-Katz said. “For me it was almost straight up.”
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that initiatives Dotters-Katz’s counts as key achievements, such as the reallocation of ASUO money to lower student fees, were not promised in his campaign but developed during his presidency. Other issues such as late-night buses and 24-hour library service that Dotters-Katz mentioned during his campaign that didn’t appear in his written platform were also successful and became signatures for the president.
Dotters-Katz failed, however, to fulfill all of the promises he made. His written platform was split into nine goals, which are analyzed below.
Keep student dollars on campus
The crux of Dotters-Katz’s attempt to ensure that more of the incidental fee, which funds the ASUO, is spent on campus, was his push to stop funding OSPIRG, the statewide research and advocacy group that drew $117,044 from the ASUO this year.
In one of the most bitter political struggles of the year, Dotters-Katz persuaded the ASUO budget committee that governed funding for the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group’s contract to vote against renewing the contract for the 2009-10 school year.
“Frankly,” Dotters-Katz said, “What we’ve learned about OSPIRG was that it is just something that had been fossilized on the ASUO budget not because of its merit but because of the insider, special-interest politics that really dominated the discourse about student group and contract budgets.”
Reduce textbook costs
Dotters-Katz promised to create a foundation endowment at The Duck Store. The idea was that donors would give money to the foundation to subsidize lower costs for University students’ textbooks. Dotters-Katz said during his campaign that the store’s management supported his plan.
However, the plan never came to fruition. Dotters-Katz was elected while the University administration was in the midst of its own massive fundraising effort.
“When we first tried to create a foundation, we were told … that it would interfere with Campaign Oregon, and so we waived it,” Dotters-Katz said.
Afterward, he said, the plan ran into legal wrangles.
“It was something that was really tough and I think that it’s definitely fair to say that we failed in achieving that campaign promise,” Dotters-Katz said. “But I also think that it’s fair to say that we couldn’t have done anything more to pursue it being successful.”
Engage you
Dotters-Katz promised to “launch the largest student voter registration drive in history” during his campaign.
After he entered office, he set the more conservative target of registering 10,000 students as Oregon voters. However, despite forming a wide-ranging coalition that canvassed, text-messaged and presented to classes, Dotters-Katz and his allies came up short, registering only 7,245 voters, less than 3/4 of the intended target number.
However, Dotters-Katz said he is still proud of his effort. “If registering 7,100-some-odd students is a failure, then that’s one I’m very willing to accept,”he said.
Dotters-Katz said other voter registration drives orchestrated by the ASUO in the spring of 2008 and the Obama campaign in the fall competed with his campaign for potential voters. “I can guarantee you over 10,000 students were registered by somebody on this campus, whether they’re affiliated with our coalition or not,” Dotters-Katz said.
Decrease our collective carbon footprint
Dotters-Katz promised to fight global warming by supporting Campus Recycling’s compost program and the EMU’s Bike Loan Program and he did both during his time in office.
The compost program was threatened when an initial budget produced for Campus Recycling by an ASUO committee did not include the $112,697 needed to fund the program.
Dotters-Katz was not the only one pushing to preserve the service – OSPIRG and the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation both mustered support – but he did promise to veto any budget that did not make room for the compost program. He said committee members Brendan Good and Sen. Demic Tipitino likely would not have supported the program without his veto threat.
Meanwhile, Dotters-Katz also helped secure funding for the bike loan program with money generated by the University through an environmental tax credit.
Increase transparency and professionalism
Dotters-Katz promised to use weekly radio shows and podcasts and monthly e-mail newsletters to raise awareness about the ASUO’s actions. However, the radio show ended after a few broadcasts, because, Dotters-Katz said, “No one listened.” Dotters-Katz said the show was scheduled concurrently with Greek Life dinners, limiting its audience.
Meanwhile, Delashaw said the newsletter idea was scrapped because it would “overload people with information.”
End insider corruption
Dotters-Katz chastened his predecessors for sanctioning trips to off-campus conferences for ASUO officeholders. He said that during his administration, few students used student money to finance trips.
Protect student ticket accessibility
Dotters-Katz called for a system for distributing student tickets that did not give preference to upperclassmen. The current electronic ticketing system allots specific quotas of tickets for each class of students. Dotters-Katz said he pushed for the initiative on the Associated Students Presidential Advisory Committee.
Oppose DPS Tasers and enhance student safety
Before Dotters-Katz took office, the Oregon University System had already planned a text message warning system. Dotters-Katz said he didn’t want to take credit for the system. As for Tasers, Dotters-Katz said, “The only person who used to be a student who I remember being Tased was Ian Van Ornum, and that happened downtown.”
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