Public Interest Groups have been an important part of America’s politics with regard to representative advocacy since the early 1970’s. The Oregon State PIRG, founded in 1971, is one of the first chapters in the country and has also been at the forefront of successful lobbying Washington for forty years.
Because of their national success, the State PIRGs launched a non-profit organization called the FFPIR (Fund for the Public Interest Research; informally known as ?The Fund?) in 1982. The Fund is a popular funding rubric used by interest groups to responsibly budget and gauge the public interest by utilizing private donation techniques. The Fund and encompasses massive organizations like the Sierra Club and Human Rights Campaign. There is only one State PIRG that does not adhere to The Fund’s rubric.
The Fund exists because it is the most effective way to keep Public Interest Groups accountable to who they represent. When the public is the primary vehicle for directly controlling the financial capabilities of the organization through private donation, the PIRG is financially obligated to advocate for the specific interests that the public prioritizes. If a PIRG begins to deviate from the public interest, they risk losing funding. The Fund is a safety-net against back-door lobbying that requires responsible and accurate representative advocacy.
No Student PIRG in the United States utilizes The Fund. For this reason, the controversy regarding Student PIRGs is much larger than our institutional microcosm, it is national.
I highly respect and admire most of OSPIRG’s core members. They are fine politicians and caring individuals. The causes that they advocate for are of paramount importance, and the time and effort these students put into their organization is astounding. I hope that my firm opposition of their organization will remain impersonal, and it saddens me that it likely will not.  It is, however, ignorant for a legislator with voting power to misunderstand the implications of establishing a mandatory fee for a Public Interest group: the two are not concurrent.
With a mandatory fee, OSPIRG loses all accountability to its students; with a mandatory fee, OSPIRG may dictate its own lobbying agenda while carrying no risk of fund termination if this advocacy differs from the public interest of students. Because of this, the quotation from OSPIRG?s website ?by keeping our funding strictly from students, we ensure that we are always accountable to students and students only? is false. Because of this, the idea of a mandatory fee as the primary funding source for any PIRG is just as politically irresponsible as it is morally fallacious.
Does OSPIRG have a place on our campus? I think yes. Student PIRG chapters should exist, just like student government should exist. OSPIRG provides an outlet for students to experience alternative forms of politics, a potential networking ring for later careers, and just causes for students to work on. But I, and much of the country, see no reason that the Student chapters should be exempt from the model outlined by The Fund.
I implore OSPIRG to restructure its financial model to adhere to The Fund. Until then, any vote to institutionalize a hypocritical mandatory fee for the self-described “public interest” should remain nay.