Ralph Nader’s visit to the University in 1970 sparked the birth of one of the most controversial groups on campus.
The Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group — an environmental and consumer protection organization — has called the University home ever since Nader’s swing through town more than 31 years ago.
OSPIRG has faced several struggles in the last decade, including going to court to fight for its right to receive student funding. The group’s supporters describe the organization as one that fights for environmental concerns and consumer rights — issues they say affect all students.
But those who oppose the group’s funding have continued to raise suspicions about OSPIRG’s operations and where its money goes, causing the organization to close a couple of times in the past. Some have even called it a “troublesome” group that lobbies the government and uses student money to finance mainly off-campus work — a claim which opponents say it hides from students.
Despite a lawsuit and ongoing efforts to shut the group down, however, OSPIRG is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and organizers say they will continue to fight for student funding. The group currently receives $144,426 a year at the University, which is about $2.88 per student, per term.
“There will be people out there who will disagree with us,” recently hired OSPIRG organizer Jo Voss said. “I’d like them to focus more on what we do. Students recognize how we are a part of the bigger picture.”

Mac Court starts it all
OSPIRG’s story began at McArthur Court, when Nader gave a speech to more than 3,000 students. Even though prosperity existed, he said then, people should be aware of the “paradox in the history of our nation.
“There is still hunger, consumer fraud, government corruption, the deterioration of public services and the contamination of our government,” he said Oct. 9, 1970.
Nader helped call for a referendum to raise student fees by $1 per term to start OSPIRG at the University. The money would help finance professionals, such as lawyers and scientists, to study problem areas defined by the student board. Students would then disseminate this information to other students and community members.
In this way, the group could help legally challenge “illicit and negligent” operations on behalf of students, he said.
Petitions were printed in the Emerald, and eventually the referendum was approved by students and the State Board of Higher Education. The ASUO Senate allocated $250 to the group, and the first OSPIRG chapter opened at the University in 1971.
The group gained momentum throughout the years and expanded from its first chapter on the University to 75 PIRG chapters nationally in 32 different states. The four Oregon chapters are active at the University, Lane Community College, Southern Oregon University and Portland State University.
One of OSPIRG’s most successful campaigns, according to members, was the National Forest Campaign in 1997, which helped convince the Clinton administration to preserve 58.5 million acres of land nationally, including 2 million acres in Oregon.
On the consumer rights end, a recent OSPIRG study examined what members called “deceptive” practices credit-card companies use on campuses and provided tips for students. The report was distributed on campus this year.
Other OSPIRG fights have included renters’ rights, homelessness and the fight to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge closed to drilling.
Former ASUO Vice President Ben Unger, Class of 1998, is now the OSPIRG campus program director. He said the group has developed through the years.
“We’ve grown quite a ways since the old days,” he said. “It was just a simple, unique idea that showed how students as consumers shared common interests and could make a difference. It just took off like wildfire.”

Students challenge

OSPIRG’s budget
The first big debate began about five years ago when former Oregon Commentator editor Owen Brennan Rounds and several other students filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of OSPIRG’s funding.
Rounds, Class of ’95, began searching through OSPIRG’s budget, and found that it presented only one line item. Other student groups showed where budget money was spent dollar-for-dollar under areas such as printing and phone costs. OSPIRG’s chunk of more than $100,000 in fees, however, was all under one category.
“All that money disappeared in one bulk sum,” Rounds said. “Any student group should be held accountable. Through purchase orders you can see if group X, Y, or Z spent $100 to buy two kegs — you can prove this. Evidence of OSPIRG’s operations didn’t exist. OSPIRG takes a large sum of money and is completely unaccountable.”
Voss countered that the group’s money is accounted for through an ASUO budget process and also has a professional audit done every year.
“Being a unique, statewide student-directed group working to solve Oregon’s biggest problems, we’re accountable for students by going through the ballot and ASUO fee allocation process.”
Rounds, who is now a writer in New York City, also learned that much of the funding went to finance professionals off-campus to lobby for state and national issues.
An example of acceptable lobbying by a student funded group such as the ASUO would be lobbying in Salem for issues such as lowering tuition, Rounds said. But students should not be forced to pay for plans that don’t directly benefit campus, such as OSPIRG’s Streamwalk Project, which includes efforts to clean rivers.
Rounds said this logic falls under the same reasons young Republicans and Democrats cannot use student money to lobby for political issues in Washington, D.C.
“From the philosophical angle, I have the right not to have my money spent to further someone else’s agenda — that’s forced association,” he said. “It’s the most grotesque abuse of student fees on campus.”
He added that other groups, such as the Survival Center, already work on some of the same issues as OSPIRG and do a better job of showing their efforts on campus.
Voss, who took her position at OSPIRG this fall, said local and national issues such as toxic waste and polluted water are pertinent to every person, and OSPIRG’s campaigns benefit people not only as students but as citizens. Money does pay for staff working off-campus, she said, but this helps make OSPIRG campaigns effective.
“It’s true that student fees go off of campus — that is part of what we do,” she said. “It’s also part of what makes us successful on the work we do and helps us continue to work as citizens of the state and whole country.”

Success, a loss, success
Rounds mentioned that in 1995, a series of OSPIRG funding articles in the Commentator raised suspicion on campus. The ASUO Senate and budget committee even began questioning the group’s spending, and OSPIRG’s budget was denied at least once, according to Emerald archives.
The most successful attempt to deny OSPIRG incidental fees came in 1998, when students voted against the group in the ASUO election. Instead of having its budget approved by the Programs Finance Committee, OSPIRG goes on the ballot every two years and requires student approval to get funding. The loss defunded OSPIRG, and the group was not on campus the following year.
Former Commentator writer Jonathan Collegio spearheaded the Honesty Campaign that year, wanting to hold OSPIRG accountable for a line-item budget and demanding that student money stay on campus. The campaign encouraged students to vote “no” on OSPIRG.
“PIRGs, no matter what any of their spokespeople say, are archetypal political interest groups,” Collegio said in 1999. “Students should not be required to fund organizations as such.”
But with increased campaign efforts, OSPIRG went back on the ballot and quickly re
turned to campus within a year.
Meanwhile, Rounds’ case was defeated in the lower courts, but the plaintiffs continued appealing, with judge after judge ruling against them. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that OSPIRG’s funding was legal, and Rounds dropped the case last year.
“We kept working, they kept appealing,” Unger said. “It was a big turnaround for what students have the right to be doing on and off-campus for issues that affect us as citizens as a whole. A whole set of groups would have been affected if we’d lost. It’s an amazing victory. “
Coincidentally, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1999, several students objected to using student fee money to fund groups with whose ideologies they disagreed — which they said trampled over their First Amendment rights. But the students lost in the case of Southworth v. Grebe, which ruled that student incidental fees were legal because they funded groups that made campuses diverse.
But Rounds said his case was specific to OSPIRG. If he had won, he said, it would not have stopped the funding of other groups, such as student unions, which would have been affected by the Southworth case. He added that none of the court rulings completely dismissed the OSPIRG debate.
“We had a specific concern on specific funding of a specific group,” he said. “The Supreme Court left the door wide open for challenging the way OSPIRG is funded.”

Honesty and the future
The Commentator’s Honesty Campaign has continued working against OSPIRG’s campaign in the last few years. Last year, when OSPIRG went on the ballot, it came out with a slim win. While 808 votes were in its favor, 752 votes rejected the group’s funding.
Voss said this year’s staff is completely new but excited to work on upcoming projects. She said she hopes to communicate OSPIRG’s purpose and accomplishments better to students this year and bring more professionals at the state level to campus. The group has also made strides in showing where its budget goes.
Students with questions can also visit OSPIRG’s Web site at http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~ospirg/. The site presents some general breakdowns of where expenses go, including funds that go outside Eugene. A graph on the site breaks down the student fee in categories such as recycling and the consumer watchdog program.
Much of the fee funding goes toward hiring a staff of professionals and operating costs such as printing renters’ rights handbooks, according to OSPIRG. Also, less than 8 percent of fees from the University go toward administration and fundraising, according to the group.
Voss recognized that some people may continue to criticize the organization, but she said she will keep fighting for OSPIRG’s funding and spreading its message to campus.
“Everything will be rebuilding,” Voss said. “Hopefully we won’t be bogged down by the past and can create a better message of what we do, where our money goes and what we’re all about. Nothing will be hidden. It’s definitely a future outlook.”