Oregon Daily Emerald: What year are you and what are you majoring in?
Paul Griffes: My year is senior and I’m a geography major.
Emerald: Where are you from?
Griffes: I grew up all around Northern California and I’ve been in Eugene and Oregon for almost three years.
Emerald: Why do you want to run for student senate?
Griffes: I want to run because I’d like to become more involved in student government and because there are a few issues that I am particularly interested in and I believe the best way to bring more attention to those issues and see that my interests are represented well is if I am actually sitting on the student senate.
Emerald: What are some of the issues you are concerned with?
Griffes: Primarily, among these issues actually, is the new partnership with Oregon Legislative package. LC 970 is what they are calling it right now.
Emerald: What’s that you are looking at?
Griffes: This is actually a copy that I took from the Governmental Affairs office at the University. It’s got a preliminary piece of legislation they are going to be presenting. It’s going to make major changes to the way that the University is being run. Almost to some extent, privatizing the University, which to me seems like a pretty contentious issue and it seems like something that should be getting a lot more public debate and scrutiny than it is. Right now it’s being guided into the Oregon State Legislature very, very quietly. And to me that’s very suspicious, it’s something I’m concerned about. Within the text of the Higher Education Efficiency Act, there are many aspects to it that are of concern, but a couple of them that really stand out to me, is that they are going to free-up the individual institutions within the Oregon University System to develop the curriculum and to create programs without seeking any sort of state authority or — so that individual universities will be able to develop degree programs without necessarily passing it by any kind of a public body or a public authority. That in itself wouldn’t be as concerning if it weren’t for another section hidden further in the act which states that donors are going to be protected from having their identities revealed, so that somebody could come into the University, dump a bunch of money in the administration’s lap or into a department’s lap and start developing curriculum and programs without ever disclosing to the taxpayers who they are or what their agenda is.
Emerald: What is the name of the document you are reading from?
Griffes: This is ‘A New Partnership with Oregon Legislative Package’ and you can find it on the Governmental Affairs Web site in the University of Oregon.
Emerald: You also said something about the war resolution before? (recording error)
Griffes: So there has been no war resolution, it got a lot of attention here on campus, it went to the University Senate, which is separate from the student senate, although there are I think four or five student senators represented on the University Senate. University Senate said ‘Hey, we are not a big enough body to consider something this big, we can’t represent the entire campus on this issue. We are going to kick it to the Assembly. And that was great except the Assembly doesn’t really represent the student body. It represents all the faculty very well, but it doesn’t represent the students. So in addition to that I would have like to see the student senate kick the issue to the students via a ballot. And they had the opportunity to do that and they didn’t. I don’t even believe that they discussed it. So there’s no formal attempt to address the issue of allowing the students to have their input on that issue as a body. And I think that there should have been. And that was just one issue, I think there are a lot of areas in which the senate could be used. And I’m not saying that this year’s senate has failed on all issues, they’ve had a lot of successes and I don’t want to become overly critical of the student senate. That was just one issue that was brought to mind for me, the opportunity that there would be for the student senate to get the student body more involved in things that are pertinent, that are happening now that are involving the University.
Emerald: Are there any other clubs, groups or activities on campus or in the community that you are a part of?
Griffes: Yes, a there are a couple political organizations that I participate in, relatively recently I’ve just started becoming really involved in political issues, at least activism issues in the last couple of months. Students for Peace is a big one that people are pretty familiar with, and also the College Democrats. And I think that the highest degree of involvement I’ve had with the College Democrats, aside from just attending meetings and participating in strategy and all that, was the debates. The last debates we had with the Republicans, I was with Kevin Curtain presenting the Iraq issue, and aside from that I was also the Surf Club coach last year and half of this year.
Emerald: How will you figure out how to spend the surplus that the senate disperses each year?
Griffes: Well, that goes mostly to the Programs Finance Committee, doesn’t it?
Emerald: The surplus is money that is rolled over, like this year the student groups are given a budget and what they don’t spend this year rolls into next year’s surplus for the senate. And they disperse that through special requests from student groups. So it’s left over money. So for next year’s senate it will be money left over from this year and that senate will be in charge of dispersing to student groups who come to it with special requests.
Griffes: Are the special requests submitted to the different budget committees, or are they submitted to the senate itself? Because the senate seat I am running for is actually an academic seat, so I won’t be sitting on like, say, the PFC.
Emerald: Right, they take it directly to the senate and then the senate votes as a body to give them. it becomes the senate’s money to give away to student groups through special requests for, one event at a meeting I covered was the dance team made it to nationals, and they came with a special request to help fund that trip. Something that they couldn’t have accounted for in their PFC budget that came up. The student senate has money to work with to meet those kinds of unforeseeable needs that groups have. And everybody votes on them.
Griffes: I would say that I’ll be taking notice on a case-by-case basis. Some of the principal guidelines that I would use for allocating money would be how wide a portion of the student body is going to benefit, say if it was legal services and they came and said ‘hey we need more money,’ well, legal services is something that just about every student on campus could benefit from. But if it was, say, some other group, with a much more narrow focus, and there are a lot of them that I could think of, so I’m not going to single out any one, but if your group only benefits a very small sliver of the campus population, in my eyes you shouldn’t be as entitled to money that everybody pays into as some other function that everybody benefits from. Another area that I think really needs some attention, starting next year, in terms of either student incidental fees or maybe even administrative money is that we don’t really have a student housing office on campus, and we’ve got a lot of very specialized programs on campus and it seems to me with all the different specialized programs and all the money that’s given to all these programs, there should be some money for something so basic as housing.
Emerald: You mean different than residence halls, University Housing office?
Griffes: Right, yeah, it would be an office that basically specializes in providing students with information about rentals off campus, and issues in dealing with landlords, maybe keep a database recording student complaints regarding landlords and issues and fa
cilitating communication between students and legal services in situations where legal services would need to step in. Again, it’s a pretty basic function that a lot of campuses provide for their students, and I don’t understand why we are not doing it. So that’s another issue that I’d be bringing up next year.
Emerald: How will you interact with student groups?
Griffes: Well I’ll be keeping office hours, I’ll have an e-mail address, and people who are interested in getting my attention who have issues they want to bring to a senator will know where to contact me. I believe there are too many different groups — I’ve gone over the list of all the different student groups on campus — I’m not going to promise to go out and meet everybody personally. I’m a full-time student and my whole life is not going to revolve around this, but I want to be accessible to the entire student body if I were to be elected to this position, including the groups.
Emerald: What are the most important issues facing the students you would represent if elected?
Griffes: The most important issues, facing, I believe, all of us on the student body is ability to pay for college so that we can stay in school because you can’t get a degree — none of the rest of it is going to make any difference if you can’t stay in school. So I think first and foremost, it’s a student’s ability to remain in school, and it has a lot to do with being able to fund your education. Keeping the fees as low as possible and increasing financial aid and making the financial aid office as responsive as possible to the people that need extra help. After that, the actual academics issue, the issue of academics and scheduling. Another issue that I hope to be able to tackle next year is the lack of night classes available on this campus. I think the Oregon Public School System, college system, it really stands out in contrast to other states I’ve lived in, I grew up in California but I also spent some time on the East Coast, in New York, Massachusetts and most public school systems provide for night classes because not everybody who wants to go to college fits that 18-to-22-year-old-mom-and-dad-are-paying-for-it profile, unfortunately, the University of Oregon caters almost exclusively to that profile — or people who can arrange their finances in a similar way, which is not most working people. So I would really like to see the University offering more night classes, and not just in music or dance or something like that, but in the core general education requirements and degree requirements that you need in order to get a degree from this school.
Emerald: What would be maybe your first avenue to go about making that happen?
Griffes: I would bring it up both to the faculty senate and the student senate, and I would also bring it up to administration. I would notify all those bodies up front and then go about approaching the separate departments and maybe going to the department heads and ask them what they would need in order to be able to provide curriculum after 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. I think between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. is the optimum time for people who are working the 9 to 5 shifts, which is most working people. I’m not familiar enough in all the rules and regulations but I am definitely confident in my ability to find my way.
Emerald: What’s the most important part of section 5 of the student senate rules and why?
What are you doing right now?
Griffes: I am looking up student senate rules section 5 because I don’t have the greatest short term memory on the planet and whatever I do in life in general and if I were to be elected to this position is going to require me to have access to databases or hard copy forms whatever, I’m not going to be able to memorize the student senate rules, the ASUO constitution, the constitution court rules and all the other rules that I’ll have to deal with. So having hard copy access or access via the web is kind important to me in doing this job.
Griffes: Duties: ‘Senators shall attend regular meetings.’ Well that’s going to be important. ‘Maintain office hours.’ That’s going to be important. ‘Providing verbal reports.’ Who am I providing them to? It doesn’t say who you are providing the verbal reports to but I’m sure it’s important. You’ve got to report to whoever you are reporting to, maybe the other senators. Serving on the ASUO academic council would be important. Attending at least one meeting of the Programs Finance Committee. It looks like they’ve honed this down to a very high degree on the responsibilities that are most important to begin with. I would guess just about everything covered under section 5 is going to be very important but topping that list would be attending the scheduled meetings and making myself available to the students via office hours and promptly responding to e-mails and phone calls.
Emerald: Why do you think those two things are important in fulfilling your job?
Griffes: Well, if you aren’t at the meetings then you can’t represent the student body and if you are not accessible to the student body then you can’t represent, so those two things would definitely be the top of my list.