Damion Meany is a 30-year-old biology and bio-chemistry double major. He’s a senior in his third year.
Oregon Daily Emerald: How would you figure out how to spend the surplus?
Meany: Spend the surplus? Well, I kind of think the amount of incidental fees we get as students is a little to high, I would like to see us develop more of a surplus and I would really like to see all three of the budget committees develop a surplus, and then somebody have the foresight to say, well hey, you know, if we don’t need all this money then lets stop taking it from the students and I know I was really upset about the increase in tuition. I was pretty ticked off to get a bill that said that, you know, on top of what I had already paid for tuition, I had to pay another 170 dollars.
Emerald: Specifically, I guess, for surplus, I thinking more in terms of the senate, however, I mean because you’re on the — you’re running for a seat where you’re on the PFC and also for student senate.
Meany: Right
Emerald: So how would you spend the — what would you do with the student senate surplus?
Meany: The student senate surplus. Now is that — to be honest, I’m not really aware of what that is.
Emerald: It’s something they get every term that they are able to use to help student groups out with certain problems.
Meany: Huh. You know, I looked back on the records, and last year’s records aren’t available yet but I looked back at the years before, at the amount of money that is going from incidental fees and who it’s going to, and I think that there’s a pretty equitable split between groups, and well, yeah, between some groups there is a pretty equitable split. I don’t want to single anybody out, there are some majors, some academic majors, that have a lot more clubs and others that don’t like the sciences there’s pre-med and pre-health and they get, like, very little funding, but there’s not much at the level of senator I could do about that, and you would like to, you know, encourage people to start more clubs and get more involved and do stuff like that but they have to have the proper leadership. You can’t just hand someone money and hope that they do the right thing with it. You would actually have to have somebody that’s organized and have a plan for where that money is going to go. So that being said, we have a lot of clubs that have some really good events, so if they come up with more ideas of things that they would like to do throughout the year I’d definitely be behind support at the student level. I think one of the problems I see is you have a huge sum of student incidental fees that are going to people who are not really — I don’t consider them student groups. I think that student money would be better served going towards things that benefit the students directly and immediately.
Emerald: What specifically are some things that you think it’s going to that shouldn’t right now?
Meany: Well, I’ll jump and kick the dead horse, too — OSPIRG, I think they might very well be doing things that are in all of our best interests as students; however, in order to be a student group and in order to get some hundred thousand dollars of student money, I think they need to, involve the students in that process. I think that that even if the resounding majority of students believe the same thing this group of individuals believe, it’s like they’re trying to say that they’re a student group so they can get our financial support and then go out and do whatever they want and the fact that they support student beliefs or they may or may not support student beliefs is like, what’s the word I’m looking for it’s, it just happens to be that way. You know what I mean. It’s not, it’s not …
Emerald: How would you interact with student groups?
Meany: How will I interact with student groups? Let’s see. Well, in the PFC meetings, I noticed that there’s kind of a — not having been there but having looked back at the transcripts of the meetings and seeing how that happens, it looks like the student groups are kind of being rushed through procedure, and if they understand how the bureaucratic procedure goes then they can represent themselves well but I don’t think, um, well I’ve just I’ve seen that three or four pages arguing over forty dollars or you know, well, you know, you said that you’re doing this much but according to my figures you should get, like, twenty dollars less for your group so I just I don’t think there’s, , a lot of support in terms of the actual PFC meeting.
Emerald: How about for the student senate side of things?
Meany: For the student senate side of things? Um, well I’d like to give groups whatever support that they need. I think that they provide a very valuable service to the student body. I think that you have a lot of people who tend to live in a kind of homogeneous area of the country and a lot of student groups let the students feel at home, you know what I mean?
Emerald: How do they do that?
Meany: Just by offering support and community and a place to gather with people who have like culture or like opinion — I’m all for that.
Emerald: What are the most important issues facing the student groups you represent?
Meany: The student groups that I represent? Well, I’m only a member of one student group.
Emerald: What group is that?
Meany: I’m a member of the Asklepiads, the pre-health society.
Emerald: How do you spell that?
Meany: A-s-k-l-e-p-i-a-d-s
Emerald: You plan on going to medical school, correct?
Meany: Yeah, I plan on going to medical school, actually, after college, and I think that group has been a valuable resource to myself and many others in planning for the future. It’s, you know, very competitive trying to get into medical school. There are a lot of challenges that are unique, and other groups, even though I’m not directly involved with any other group I respect the fact that every different major um and every different student has unique challenges that they face here at school and beyond and any way that I can help students I will.
Emerald: What’s the most important thing you should know in order to deal with the budget process?
Meany: The most important thing that you should know? Wow. I think that, OK, I’m going to get really deep on you here. None of us decided the world that we, that we’re born into, you know what I mean? It’s, we all kind of get it handed down to us by our parents and they had it handed down by their parents and they had it handed down by their parents and all of us as individuals have a choice to make as to what we’re going to do with the world we’re handed and I think that the vast majority of people who get into political positions chose to figure out how to work the system, the good parts of the system and the bad parts of the system, to their own personal advantage.
Emerald: Right, how does it deal with the budget process?
Meany: How it deals with the budget process is, as I was saying before with the students in clubs who go in who aren’t familiar with bureaucratic process, well, because the senators have a bunch of people to see and they can see that these people aren’t really familiar with the process they just kind of rubber stamp and roll over them or just kind of run them through the wringer over $4 for postage or $80 for, you know, promotional fees or whatever, and I think that’s one of the problems leaning on the budget problem.
Emerald: Right, so that’s a problem — what do you think the most important thing you should know in order to deal with the budget process?
Meany: In order to deal with the budget process. How to deal with the budget process. Well, you should be familiar with parliamentary procedure, you should try to be familiar as you can with the groups that are before you, you should know, you know, in the extre
me cases whether or not they actually represent a significant fraction of the student body, because it is the student body’s money that you are ma
king your decision based on. And you have to exercise a little bit of judgment I think as to what is appropriate I think that in a lot of the budget making process you get people who get the same amount of money just because that’s how much they got last year, do you know what I mean? So you can have somebody come in that you know that their group, their club, their whatever got a hundred thousand dollars and if they were to just say, well, you know, we spent it and that’s how much we want again this year. Then I think one of the failings of the budget process is people just rubber stamp it and send it right through and say, hey, great, but that’s, you know, and I don’t think that’s right. I think that the only or one of the very few checks and balances in that system despite people being honest in the budget making but I think that it’s been proven a lot of times or stated by a lot smarter people then me that people will, or groups will, act in terms of their own survival, so if they can increase their budget they will if they can say, well hey, let’s take a little more money this year. They’ll do it whether they need it or not. They’ll aggressively seek to ensure they’re own survival, and you have to think of the big picture, you have to think of the student body as a whole you have to think, does somebody need, does the ASUO elect need three hundred and twenty thousand dollars of student money a year to run, you know that’s a significant thing to me, the, you know, there are some other things the career mentor program that you see with their, well there’s a lot of different things about that. I’m not so sure about — they e-mail everyone every term to try to get them to sign up for the class, do you know what I mean? If there was student interest then there wouldn’t need to be such an aggressive advertising campaign and on top of that, it’s a class, it’s developing revenue for the university. It’s a two-credit class so if it’s developing revenue then why isn’t that revenue going to support that program. Do you see what I’m saying? I think that could be a way that the university is kind of double spending student money — if the university has got money going in and then they’re saying, well hey, we need more money for you from student fees then not only are they taking money from the students that are taking that or who sign up for that class and go to that class, they are taking money from all the students for that class, even the ones who don’t opt to take the class, and I don’t know. So whether or not I agree with that, I think that one of the problems with the budget process is you get people that just they’re thinking in terms of this is what they want to do with their career so they’re going to figure out how best to do the job that they’re supposed to do and they won’t look critically at programs like this and they won’t look critically at their own budget, at the student senate budget and the ASUO budget, which as of two years ago whenever you combine it, because it’s split into a bunch of different groups, total half a million dollars and I don’t think it’s gone down and I don’t think it will go down unless you get people in there who say hey, you know, do we need this money? Why are we taking more from the students?
Emerald: So speaking of specifics, I have a specific question related to senate — who’s responsible for maintaining the senate Web site?
Meany: I have absolutely no idea.
Emerald: One last question — what is the most important part of section five of the student senate rules and why?
Meany: What is section five of the student senate rules?
Emerald: You don’t know?
Meany: I don’t know.
Emerald: Okay, it’s the elect’s responsibilities.
Meany: That would probably be a good thing to look over, wouldn’t it? Yeah, well as you may have noticed, I signed up last Wednesday and have not have not had the time to look that over just yet, so if you could give me an abridged version?
Emerald: Basically, the thing you should do is read the Green Tape Notebook.