Please understand that there is about to be a terrible mistake. Let me say first I have had a friendship or working relationship with the last five ASUO presidents, interned in the office and participated in student groups for years. So I speak with some authority on the situation. The election of any group who calls for increased scrutiny of the incidental fee or ASUO funds doesn’t understand that there is already huge bureaucracy and oversight. So much so, that groups like Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS) and the Crisis Center are having difficulty getting through the bureaucracy and dealing with sexual violence and other crises. When one in three women are raped and the University’s student rape victims make up most of Lane County’s victims, they need support, not scrutiny.
There are committees to examine budgets as a whole — controllers to oversee every single expenditure, down to the penny. Whether it’s for food, music, speakers, videos, vans or room reservations, every penny is scrutinized and accounted for. The student incidental fee is $195 a term for full-time students. It helps fund scores of groups — the Multicultural Center, the Women’s and Men’s Centers, the marching band, the campus recycling program, the Student Recreation Center and the EMU. It pays for game tickets, at least five student publications, the Oregon Student Association and much, much more.
The ASUO voted to fund SASS, and the University administration has not signed off on the contract. This should raise two questions: Where is the University’s commitment to the victims of sexual assault? Second, why won’t they respect student authority, since after all, we fund this institution? It is a mistake to not sign the SASS contract.
But there is another mistake, one about student power. Since Alex and Alden are running on a platform about fiscal conservatism, I think it’s important to mention that they are focusing on scrutinizing the incidental fee. This has two problems: One, if you want a fiscally sound house, focus where you will have an impact, especially since a 100 percent change in the incidental fee is less than a 10 percent change in tuition. It seems to me a fiscally sound house would be better built not with pebbles from the EMU, but the quarry down the street at Johnson Hall and Oregon Hall. Second, it distracts from other important issues such as SASS and University administration efforts to disempower students. Folks like Robin Holmes in the University administration worked with the last ASUO Executive to do away with over-realized funds. The “over-realized” were a resource for single-use funds, which have been instrumental for supporting events and giving students an auxiliary funding option.
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