Oregon Daily Emerald: What’s your year/major?
Diamond: I’m a political science major
Emerald: What year are you?
Diamond: I’m a junior
Emerald: Are you involved in any groups or activities here on campus?
Diamond: Yeah, I’ve been active in the College Democrats since my freshman year, I have, from time to time, freelanced for the Oregon Commentator, and I spent all spring working for the (governor) campaign. That was a very interesting mixture, we had two people on staff — we had two people on campaign staff who had, at one time or another, worked for the Commentator.
Emerald: Why are you interested in student government?
Diamond: It’s been something I’ve had a passing interest in actually since I got to the (University). I mean, I was involved in student government through the high school years of course, and this is my last shot at it, so I kind of figured, hey, might as well give it a shot, see what I can do.
Emerald: How will you will figure out how to spend the surplus?
Diamond: My biggest spending priority actually, I mean, would just be getting people back — anything that could get people back to campus after classes are out. Having been overseas, I’ve seen what campus life is like in other countries, and it’s a little more vibrant. Like at the University of Heidelberg, they have just tons of cultural activities day in and day out, every week of the term, and their terms are 20 weeks long. So that’s really interesting to me. So any group that came forward with a proposal to throw some sort of event that would bring people back here and kind of create more of a campus community would get a priority from me.
Emerald: Would there be any standards that you have in mind that you would hold groups to — all groups to — in order for them to get money?
Diamond: What, just like accounting standards?
Emerald: Right, any kind of standards.
Diamond: I think transparency in accounting would be one of them. I mean, the ASUO controls a budget of somewhere around $9 million, and that breaks down to about 5 — I think it’s going up — it’s going to be more than $550 a person next year, and, yeah, you want to know where that money goes. I’ve worked for the Commentator, which has traditionally been fairly critical of the PFC. I haven’t done anything for them lately, but I do have kind of a rapport with some of the guys of that staff, and I think, perhaps, it would be possible for me to kind of address some of their criticisms, or at least allay some of their criticisms.
Emerald: What kind of criticisms?
Diamond: Well, you’re familiar with some of the arguments (they) make. It’s basically organizations don’t have transparent accounting, and they’re not accountable for where all their money goes. Personally, I think they’ve scapegoated a couple organizations. And obviously their biggest thing is, OSPIRG, is out of PFC’s hands. They do their own thing.
Emerald: How will you interact with student groups?
Diamond: Student groups? Well, when I’ve worked with the College Democrats in years passed, I’ve always had lots of office hours, I always tried to do that a lot during the day. And if I were working for — if I were a representative of student government, I would try to do the same thing and have an open door policy as much as possible. I always enjoy listening to people.
Emerald: What about getting involved with them? Is that something you would do?
Diamond: There is only so many organizations you can be involved with, but as long as — what level of involvement, actually joining some of the groups?
Emerald: You tell me. Any level.
Diamond: I’m fairly comfortable with my involvement in a lot of organizations right now, I mean I know a lot of people who run (them), and it’s all fairly politically oriented. I’ve worked with the College Democrats, I know people in Students for Choice and that sort of thing, and that’s really where my interests lie — those are the organizations I’m personally involved with. You know, I’d have an open mind for any organization that came before the council.
Emerald: So given your political background, and some of these political groups, would that play a factor when you interact with other student groups?
Diamond: You know, most student groups on campus are sadly nonpolitical in nature, and actually there are rules governing — if an organization on campus has a political purpose they are not eligible for student funds — that goes for the Campus Democrats, the College Republicans, so that’s really not an issue.
Emerald: What are the most important issues facing the students you represent?
Diamond: The biggest issues are largely out of the PFC’s hands, but being a representative on student government, you can hopefully lobby a higher authority. I mean, the ones I know are all related to state budget cuts. Decreases in financial aid, increases in tuition. I think the one thing that the student senate as a whole could do would be to make a real effort to lobby the Oregon Hall to report accurate figures to the Federal Department of Education regarding the cost of attendance. A lot of the tuition increases over the last — gradual tuition increases that have taken place over the last 12 months — never really got factored into people’s FAFSA data. I mean, part of that is because people completed their FAFSA’s last January, last February, when tuition numbers were significantly lower. And then after people had already applied for financial aid, those were revised, and I think there’s a limited amount of stuff that a student government can do about that, obviously, but I think it would be well worth it to make an effort to just convince people in the administration here at the (University) to accurately report the actual cost of attending, because financial aid is how most people attend this university.
Emerald: How do you know they’re not accurately doing it now?
Diamond: All I know is, I don’t know how accurate the figures for the upcoming year are, all I know is that over the course of this last year, those tables were never updated. So what you were awarded last spring is what you got, even though the cost of attendance ended up being somewhat higher.
Emerald: What is the most important thing you should know in order to deal with the budget process?
Diamond: A good knowledge of arithmetic would help. I remember there was an incident last year with some basically numerical errors at one point in the budget process, and that sort of thing should just be assiduously avoided. There’s no need for anything like that. Obviously, it’s not that hard to go over numbers and make sure that everything adds up.
Emerald: How — I guess, how would you solve that problem?
Diamond: Using, you know, spreadsheets are a wonderful, wonderful thing. I know how to use those, I’m sure plenty of other people do to. Just like a lot of people are lost without spell check these days, there’s no reason why we can’t run all your numbers through a computer to make sure they add up.
Emerald: Do you know how many standing committees the senate is obligated to have?
Diamond: I don’t, actually.
Emerald: What’s the most important part of section 5 of the student senate rules and why?
Diamond: I don’t know.
Emerald: That would be the duties. Senate duties, basically.
Diamond: Good question. Can you elaborate on some of them?
Emerald: For instance, there’s keeping office hours, things along those lines.
Diamond: Definitely being accessible would be probably a priority I’d place. Individuals have concerns, they should be able to have them heard by individuals, or by — it’s not that easy to be heard by the whole senate, that takes some coordination — but everyone should at least feel that they have a voice on the governing body.
Emerald: How would you work to make people feel like they have a voice?
Diamond: Well, it all comes down to just accessibility.
When you have office hours, keep the door open. Don’t make it look like your just hunched over, studying — kind of office hours in name only. Make it very, very clear that people are welcome to walk in, talk to you, e-mail you, probably publish that. I’d make my e-mail address known, obviously, so people could get ahold of me in that way.
Greg Diamond’s Interview
Daily Emerald
March 31, 2003
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