After what has proven to be a successful and organized end to the 2004 elections funding disclosures, we commend those student leaders who — unlike those of years past — haven’t shown utter contempt for the process’ system of accountability.
Last year, the situation post-election was surprisingly more gloomy. One pair of candidates — Christa Shively and Greg Bae, who lost the election — snubbed the process altogether and failed to release a complete record of their campaign’s finances. Or did they?
“We turned the sheet in,” Shively told the Emerald in May 2003. “(The ASUO) must have misplaced it.”
The other pair — Maddy Melton and Eddy Morales, who won — failed to properly account for funds after the election, and financial records show a sizable discrepancy: According to last year’s expenditure forms, Melton and Morales raised $1,768.87 but spent only $965.69, leaving $803.18 in unaccounted funds. Melton told the Emerald in May 2003 that $529.87 of that discrepancy could be attributed to a failure to record donated campaign supplies as an expenditure. She also said ASUO double-accounted for a $100 donation.
However, even after these errors were accounted for, a $173.31 discrepancy existed.
Melton told the Emerald last year that she was “90 percent sure it’s a missing receipt,” but like many other relevant issues in the ASUO, it simply slipped through the cracks into obscurity. Their constituents are still waiting for a full disclosure of what happened.
Adrian Gilmore — whom the Editorial Board endorsed as the best person for the 2004-05 Executive — echoed the unfortunate argument that losing candidates don’t have an obligation for full disclosure. Gilmore, who only spent $50 and came in third in the primary election, should have set an example and followed the rules.
But many others undoubtedly question the necessity of such disclosures; after all, these are just students, right? Why should they be forced to undergo any sort of watch for something so small as funding an ASUO campaign?
Well, if these student-government elects are going to prepare themselves for the political arena after college, they might as well get used to public and media scrutiny regarding their campaign finances. It’s called open democracy, and damn if it isn’t a great watchdog.
Let’s face it: Proper accounting during a campaign can be a great indicator of how student-government officials will approach funding throughout their tenure . Those who decided that a hundred bucks here and there is no big deal will probably feel the same about student money — your money.
We could venture to suggest that the Executive’s failure to properly disclose their campaign funds was indeed indicative of how they felt about student funds this year, but nobody outside the campaign has a clear idea of what happened. Was it, as Melton suggests, simply an honest error? Or was it apathy about the students’ right to know?
One thing is for sure: The ASUO Executive’s support for wasting student money was blatantly apparent this year, whether this policy is a result of wasteful campaign spending or not. At this year’s ASUO Programs Finance Committee hearings, the Executive lobbied — and succeeded — in increasing OSPIRG’s budget by 14.6 percent, despite grave concerns about the group’s questionable accounting practices (a gross lack of transparency and the concern of sending student money off campus, to be precise).
Both Melton and Morales also lobbied heavily to fund the United States Student Association, despite even more concerns that giving student money to an off-campus non-partisan political association would be a misuse of incidental fees. Melton, who is a member of the group and subsequently participated on student-funded trips to Washington, D.C., argued that USSA lobbying efforts were the reason government officials at the federal level decided to spend more money on higher education.
So what’s the moral of the story? Sure, disclosing campaign finances may not seem like such a big deal at the college level. But often students can glean a lot of meaning from how candidates control their money. And just because certain candidates end up getting elected doesn’t mean they can shirk the system and feel autonomous from the realm of scrutiny throughout their incumbency.