The Emerald reported yesterday that the ASUO Student Senate violated Oregon Public Meetings Law by failing to give 24 hours advance public notice for an executive session held during the course of its Oct. 6 meeting.
More disturbing than the actual breach of state law was the way the Senate mismanaged its reaction. Rather than addressing this serious issue, the Senate decided to deal with it after its weekend retreat to Sunriver.
The Emerald decided not to file a grievance, as it has done in the past, in part because the Senate did not attempt to remove reporter Meghann Cuniff from the session, but mostly because we expected the Senate to treat this violation as a grave matter.
It should have been dealt with before the senators left for their incidental fee-funded retreat. It’s disappointing to learn that the senate’s priorities are bonding in a resort town on the students’ dime instead of solving a problem.
Is this really a big deal? Well, considering the Senate seems at once completely unaware and completely ambivalent toward its responsibilities as elected officials, yes. The public meetings law is in place so citizens and the media can work together to hold public officials accountable for the decisions they make.
Of the 18 student senators, none was informed enough to object to the illegal executive session. In light of the fact that they didn’t have enough respect for their office to learn the laws that affect them, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that none of them made this issue a priority before heading to central Oregon.
The neccessity of these retreats is questionable at best. Within the student government opinions vary wildly.
Student Senator Jack Crocifisso told the Emerald in a Sept. 20 article that it is probably unnecessary for student leaders to travel so far but that sufficient facilities were available closer.
While ASUO President Adam Petkun supports this theory it seems to us that former ASUO Campus Outreach Coordinator Shannon Tarvin — who said she quit ASUO over personal disagreements — has a much more truthful opinion. Tarvin said the further the retreat is from campus, the less focused on business people are apt to be. Tarvin said one of the most beneficial retreats she went on last year was on campus.
If the Student Senate is going to waste incidental fees on a retreat they should at least spend the retreat getting briefed on the laws that govern how they are to act in office.
We hope at least one of the senators will take the time to skim the laws that govern their relationship with the public and the press. And we hope that in the future, the senators will take their responsibilities to their constituency and to the law more seriously. If the Senate really wanted to impress us, it would issue an official apology and put a policy in place that would require new senators to be briefed on the laws that affect their office.