Problems with the ASUO’s e-mail system could have altered the way student government interacts with the Lane Transit District bus service.
After she took office, ASUO President Emma Kallaway said, the ASUO’s e-mail server began to falter. “Even e-mails we thought were sent didn’t get through,” Kallaway said.
Kallaway said that at first, she and her staff did not realize there was a problem, and by the time she alerted EMU Information Technology Services, a month had passed.
During that time, LTD planning director Andy Vobora and former ASUO Transportation Policy Adviser Nick Schillaci tried repeatedly to e-mail her without getting through.
Vobora eventually despaired of contacting Kallaway and instead approached University Vice President for Student Affairs Robin Holmes to arrange transit agreements. In an e-mail to Schillaci sent June 18, Vobora said of Kallaway’s apparent unresponsiveness, “There have been some interesting communications with ASUO that threaten the group pass contract for next year.”
“I have offered to meet with the new ASUO president on numerous occasions, but she has yet to respond,” Vobora wrote.
At stake was the ASUO’s group bus passes, through which students are allowed to board LTD busses simply by showing their student IDs. The ASUO renews its contract with LTD every year and Vobora said he was concerned that the ASUO was trying to get out of parts of its contract, such as the possibility that security guards would have to ride the bus late at night.
However, after he talked with Holmes, Vobora said he was willing to give the ASUO more time to sign the contract. Vobora spoke to Holmes on Friday and said it was the first time the two had ever communicated.
Kallaway said she was under a different impression. “He works through Robin Holmes,” she said. Under Kallaway’s predecessor, Sam Dotters-Katz, it was Schillaci who communicated with Vobora.
Kallaway said her administration will focus on different avenues as it negotiates transportation, such as shuttle services. She said having Holmes talk to LTD will not hurt the ASUO’s autonomy. “Our student power is intact,” she said. “It doesn’t change the amount of power that we have to negotiate our own contract.”
Schillaci applauded the involvement of Holmes.
“It seems like a promising change, I guess, because there hasn’t been any response from ASUO in the last couple of weeks, and the administration may have more flexibility of funding,” he said. “Robin Holmes just kind of blew me away as being the most productive and assertive person at the University.”
Schillaci had criticized Kallaway for her apparent refusal to include him in her organization. “I doubt I play an official role in this, but I will say this as ‘just a UO student’: ASUO is continuing to be unresponsive, rude, and worthless,” Schillaci wrote in an e-mail to Vobora. He wrote that he regarded a separate set of e-mails he sent to University intern Kamal Ararso as something “they will most certainly interpret as napalm on my ASUO bridge. So if you smelled burning, it was me calling them out for being inept, unresponsive, and disrespectful to me (haha, except a little nicer, with lots of ‘I’ statements).”
Kallaway said Schillaci’s comments may have hurt the ASUO’s relationship with LTD, but she said she would still be willing to take Schillaci back. But she said Schillaci will not work directly with LTD. “It’s important that I’m the face of this contract,” she said. “The only thing I have control over is my own actions.”
Schillaci said he would be receptive to that arrangement.
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