During the ASUO election, voters made three decisions that didn’t revolve around candidates. After the polls closed on April 11, a trio of ballot measures passed that will impact the imminent future of University of Oregon student government. The Emerald breaks down the 2019 measures and what they mean for campus.

Reduction of ASUO Office Hours

Passed with 1,078 votes out of 1,445, this measure amends the ASUO constitution to reduce the number of office hours student senators must hold per week. Senators hold differing numbers of office hours based on rank and position.

Originally, the maximum number of weekly office hours to be held was seven; with the measure in effect, this number is cut down to five.

Luci Charlton, senate vice president and treasurer, sponsored the measure and explained that having seven required hours was excessive.

“I thought that having five designated hours per week, one per day, was plenty,” Charlton said. “There’s no reason to be in here seven hours when most of us already put more hours of work in. Every year, when the Senate met to go over bylaws within committees, in each finance committee, and in the Senate, this always came up. I was always the one to push that seven was way too much.”

Charlton stressed that the reduction doesn’t mean that ASUO officials are being idle.

“The hours do get put in, no question about it,” she said. “It is absolutely our job, and none of us would be in these positions if we didn’t love it. But when I have to find seven hours a week to be in this office from 9 to 5, it is a little more difficult when some of the organizational work I have can be done from home.”

Additionally, Charlton said the measure doesn’t mean that public accessibility to ASUO will be diminished.

“All of us have to put in this amount of hours,” she said. “We make ourselves very available. No matter what, we will make sure we meet with people that meet with us.”

OSPIRG Funding

The success of this measure means continued funding for the next two years for student activist nonprofit OSPIRG. The measure, which gained 1,510 votes, means that, for the 2020-2022 academic period, OSPIRG will have funding of $1.75 per student per term.

Alyssa Gilbert, UO chapter head, said that with renewed support, OSPIRG will continue running campaigns from last term, such as banning Styrofoam cups and takeout containers statewide, banning pesticides that kill bees and ending student hunger.

The ballot measure also comes after funding difficulties for OSPIRG.

“This school year and last school year, we had our funding cut by ASUO,” Gilbert said. “So instead of getting a $1.75 per term per student, we were getting a $1.63. That was because of the deficit. This time we got our full funding for the next two years.”

Gilbert said that the measure’s success was of particular importance because OSPIRG is a rare student-funded group.

“We’ve been student-funded since we were founded in 1971, so it’s really important for us to keep up,” Gilbert said. “Most student groups, ASUO gets to vote on whether they keep their funding and how much they get.”

Gilbert explained that the ballot measure is biennial and that measure made it on the ballot through student signatures.

“We got over 3,500 petition signatures from students in one week,” Gilbert said.

I-Fee Appropriation

In recent years, ASUO has grappled with a significant deficit, which this measure, in part, is intended to mitigate. Succeeding with 736 votes out of 1,419, the measure amends the constitution so that, when budgeting, the Senate can over-appropriate the Incidental Fee (a fee students pay through tuition that ASUO uses for funding) by over 25 cents, creating a financial surplus to fall back on.

Montse Mendez, current senate president and ASUO vice president-elect, sponsored the measure and said that the increase would still fall under state guidelines.

“The state-mandated maximum increase that ASUO could do would be a five percent I-Fee increase, and what the I-Fee is at is like $250 per student per term,” she said. Any increases carried out would have to stay under the five percent increase cap.

She said that while increasing the I-Fee is not the ideal route, it would serve as a financial buffer.

Mendez blamed the university enrollment projections, which ASUO works with in creating their budget, for much of the deficit problem.

“The past four years, those projections have been inaccurate,” she said. “They estimated there would be more students than actually came here. What that led to was the deficit because there was less money than we anticipated there would be.”

“The senate has the choice, if they see fit, to increase the fee by a few cents more, if that’s going to combat inaccurate enrollment projections,” Mendez said, regarding the measure.

If enrollment projections were accurate, then the surplus could be used for additional purposes, she said, while if they were inaccurate, it would help reduce the amount of the deficit.

“The concern that some people have with this measure, it sounds like it could be financially irresponsible,” Mendez said. “It’s not extra money, it’s imaginary numbers because we don’t know if enrollment projections will be accurate or not.”

She said that although she sees the measure as a “band-aid solution” and not a significant correction of financial problems, it does give ASUO more power to help fund student groups when it takes effect in fall 2020.

“Right now, the only entity that has the power is the enrollment projections office, and we have very few options on how to alleviate the problem, so this just gives another option.”