With fewer than five days left in office, ASUO President Maddy Melton and ASUO Vice President Eddy Morales’ administration is quickly coming to an end.
And while they had their share of unfortunate incidents during their tenure — the ASUO Constitution Court rebuked Melton for failing to fill empty positions fast enough, and Morales was charged with assault for allegedly attacking a female University student but was not convicted — Melton and Morales achieved many of the goals they set during their election campaign.
“We really accomplished so much,” Melton said.
Melton and Morales centered their campaign on four main issues: Increasing student representation on University decision-making bodies, supporting international students, changing the University Housing contract to give students a two-week grace period and advocating for the interests of law students and graduate students.
In an April 1, 2003 interview with the Emerald, Melton and Morales said they chose these goals because they believed they were attainable and would help a large number of students.
“All of the issues that we have picked were promises that we felt we could accomplish in our year,” Morales said in the interview.
Melton said her administration worked unceasingly to ensure that the student perspective was better represented in the decision-making process of the University. One way they strove to accomplish this, she said, was by doing massive amounts of data collection to determine which University committees were most in need of student input.
According to the University Committee Information Web site, there are 27 different University committees granted with the power to affect everything from policies on academic requirements to selecting scholarship winners to reviewing student academic records and deciding who needs to be put on probation.
Melton said choosing quality student representatives to fill almost 100 committee positions was an important but daunting task.
“You have all these committees, so many committees, but you never really know which ones have real power,” Melton said.
University Executive Assistant President Dave Hubin praised Melton and Morales for their dedication to increasing student involvement in University decisions.
“They were very attentive to the agenda of shared governance,” Hubin said. “They were effective at representing the student voice.”
Melton said her administration tried to ensure that all major decisions affecting students’ lives were not made during periods when students didn’t have the opportunity to comment. For example, this past summer the ASUO lobbied the Oregon State Board of Higher Education to delay the implementation of tuition plateau changes until January 2004 in order to give students and families additional time to plan for the potential changes.
“Because their whole process on that was so messed up, we were able to say, ‘Look this is a problem. Students aren’t being included in these dialogues,’” Melton said.
She also pointed to international student advocacy as being a successful part of her administration.
The Executive created a new position to specifically advocate for international students’ needs, hiring senior psychology major Takenori Momiyama to fill the position.
Melton said she decided to make international student advocacy a priority for her administration because international students pay the same amount of money to go to the University as out-of-state students, yet they don’t have access to the same resources that non-residents do.
“We market ourselves as an international university, but I don’t feel we provide enough resources to retain that population,” Melton said.
Momiyama said one of his biggest projects for the year has been trying to create a scholarship for international students to help them through the times of increasing tuition and lack of resources. He added that the ASUO has managed to raise nearly $3,000 for the scholarship, and he’s in the process of finalizing the selection process and filing the paperwork with the Office of International Programs. He said the new scholarship should be available fall term.
But Melton said Momiyama has done a lot more to help international students than just orchestrate and implement big projects like the creation of a new scholarship.
“He’s always at special requests for international groups, the (ASUO Programs Finance Committee) hearings and all the little things,” Melton said. “He’s always just there to help out.”
Although Melton and Morales fulfilled their first two campaign
promises, they decided to abandon their third goal — changing the University Housing contract — because they got involved in an initiative to establish city housing standards instead.
“The housing standards is an issue that the ASUO has been working on for 10 years and could never push it through,” Melton said. “But on May 25 we have a work session, and I think we have the votes to have the city council direct their staff to draft the language for a program and a code at the local level. That’s pretty much a win.”
She added that she and Morales originally campaigned on changing the University Housing contract because it seemed more attainable; they didn’t think they would be able to establish a Eugene housing code.
“At the time it seemed like the issue had just exhausted itself,” Melton said. “I didn’t want to promise something that I wasn’t going to do, because it had been promised two years in a row and had gotten nowhere. Interestingly enough, the one year that you decide to say you’re not going to do it is the year it happens.”
Despite the ASUO’s success in a battle the student government has been fighting for years, Melton and Morales’ administration did fall short of accomplishing its final goal — increased advocacy for graduate students and law students.
The Executive engaged in a moderate amount of outreach on behalf of the graduate student community. Melton attended a few bargaining sessions to support the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation and its efforts to renew its contract with the University.
In addition, the ASUO nontraditional student advocate, Kimberly Archer, organized baby-sitting nights for student parents during midterms and finals.
“The student parents were so thankful for two or three hours of free time to study for their finals,” Melton said. “That was a really cool component to the nontraditional student advocacy this year.”
But critics say the Executive’s advocacy on behalf of law students was sorely lacking.
“This is probably the hardest one, and it seems like it might be the easiest,” Melton said. “But when you get down to working with law students, they have different schedules, and that kind of throws things off.”
ASUO Student Senator and law student Colin Andries was extremely critical of Melton and Morales for failing to give law students the support they had promised in their campaign. Even though law students were more active in student government this year, Andries said it was only the law students who tried to address the concerns of law students — not the Executive.
“I don’t think (Melton and Morales) did as much as they could have,” Andries said. “The only advocacy that went on was by myself, Joe Jenkins and Adrian Gilmore, and we had to fight uphill battles left and right.”
He added that law students’ two main concerns — changing the schedule of the University Health Center and the Student Recreation Center so that they’re open during the first two weeks of the law school academic calendar — fell through the cracks.
“Maddy and Eddy did assign somebody to look into it, and they talked to me once, maybe twice, and then forgot about it,” Andries said.
Melton said she’s proud of the work her administration accomplished, however.
“It’s been a really exciting year,” Melton said. “You go through different times where sometimes you feel like you’re real
ly, really accomplishing your goals, and then you’re like, ‘Oh gosh I can hardly move this thing an inch,’” Melton said. “But I feel like when push came to shove this year, with the support of my staff, we really accomplished so much.”