After a year of attempting to prove itself, OSPIRG is asking the ASUO for funding again.
The committee that funds the ASUO’s contracts will vote today on whether to grant the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group the approximately $117,000 contract it is requesting for the 2010-11 school year.
In 2009, the ASUO voted to strip all student funding from OSPIRG, a political advocacy organization that draws its funding from student governments across the state. Defunding OSPIRG was the culmination of years of action against the group by campus conservatives, who questioned how it spent its money, benefitted campus and set its left-leaning agenda.
That year, OSPIRG’s primary opponent was then-ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz, who was a part of the student government faction opposing the group. This year’s president, Emma Kallaway, has taken a more sympathetic stance toward the group and sent a letter Tuesday to the five-member group making the decision, the Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee, calling for “incremental increases in funding” for OSPIRG.
The letter was the culmination of a year OSPIRG spent rallying support from students and influential members of student government. Its leaders spent much of winter term canvassing along East 13th Avenue for signatures on a petition aiming to put the group’s funding on the ballot for the 2010 ASUO election.
They’ve also conspicuously supported causes from affordable textbooks to efforts to benefit Haitian earthquake victims. Left-leaning student leaders have made a show of lauding OSPIRG’s contributions to causes such as the campus voter registration drive and the campus PowerShift conference during the fall.
“When we looked at recommending the funding that we did, it was kind of in recognition of the fact that, regardless of what’s happened in the last few years, although obviously that’s important, they’ve proved their value this year,” ASUO spokesperson Curtis Haley said.
Haley said the exact amount of funding for OSPIRG would be for the committee to decide. OSPIRG’s student board chair, Charles Denson, said the minimum amount upon which OSPIRG could run would be $30,000, which would pay for only statewide officers’ salaries and no services on campus.
However, for OSPIRG’s opponents, the same objections still stand.
“My questions aren’t answered,” said ASUO Sen. Alex McCafferty, a member of the ACFC who voted to revoke the group’s funding last year.
Chief among those objections is the student OSPIRG’s relationship with Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, with which it shares an acronym, office space and leadership.
The state OSPIRG gave the student organization about $80,000 to fund its operations on the University campus this year.
Denson described the money as “a loan” in the sense that “they feel that we’ll get the money back” from student government, but he said the University’s chapter of the student OSPIRG will not be expected to return the money to the state OSPIRG.
“We essentially operate as one organization that are incorporated as two for tax purposes,” Denson said of the state OSPIRG, but he said the student OSPIRG’s agenda is set by members of its student board.
The decision on whether to fund OSPIRG now falls to the ACFC, which meets today. Three members of the committee have gone on record opposing the group, meaning it is unlikely the committee will vote to fund the group.
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