OPINION & EDITORIAL
Syllabus for course “Student Organizations 101”
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Friday, January 17, 2003
Requirements for the course are as follows:
Four 10-page papers on the history, activities, services, costs, benefits, structure, personnel, vision and scope of your student organization.
A 15-minute presentation on your organization to be given to a committee of my choosing, summarizing all of your papers. (Expect to be grilled mercilessly and asked to recall minute details of your papers.)
The committee will make recommendations to me as to what your grade should be. I will completely disregard them. I will not read any of your papers, nor will I attend your presentation. If, in my casual skimming of your budget, one of your numbers seems too high for my taste, I will simply give you a failing grade
* * *
If you heard something like this on your first day of class, you would be shocked at the professor’s gross abuse of authority and responsibility. You would say it was unfair that the professor couldn’t even bother to glance at all the work you had done. You would say there was no way the professor could justify failing you without seeing any of your work.
Yet, this is precisely what the ASM Student Council did just a few weeks ago. The Student Services Finance Committee, which the Student Council appointed, spent almost 100 hours in the budget hearings of over 30 student organizations last semester. The SSFC was also presented with hundreds of pages documenting the activities of the student organizations.
SSFC made budget decisions based on all this information, and then sent the budgets to Student Council for their approval.
Student Council was given a 32-page packet of numbers of budgets. Though some council members may have done some background research on the budget numbers, they did not sit through a single budget hearing and were not provided with nearly the level of clear and comprehensive documentation as SSFC.
And yet, even with this obvious lack of information, they chose to ignore the efforts of the committee of people they chose who did have adequate information and fail five budgets: SAFE Nighttime Services, the Multicultural Student Coalition, the Asian Pacific American Council, the Diversity Education Specialists and Wunk Sheek.
The failures are primarily a result of this lack of information. For example, council members didn’t like that SAFEWalk cost $120 per walk. What they didn’t know was that this cost included time that the SAFEWalkers spent around campus. SAFEWalkers are professionally trained in safety procedure and in the past have assisted police officers and helped drunk and passed-out students on the street. They contribute to a safer atmosphere: Students at the SAFE hearing testified how seeing SAFEWalkers on campus gave them a sense of security. Had Student Council members asked a member of SSFC or a representative of SAFE, they could have told them this information. But they didn’t bother to ask and instead simply failed the SAFE budget.
The problem here is not with a process that allows for checks and balances. The Student Council is fully within its rights to oversee problems within its various bodies. Had the SSFC been involved in corrupt practices or not fulfilled its responsibilities, the Council would have been fully within its powers to fail SSFC’s work. And while I’m not proud of everything that went on in SSFC last semester, I can say, as an SSFC member with perfect attendance, that SSFC thoroughly fulfilled its duties to the best of its ability.
The problem here is with people using this system of checks and balances as a cover for their abuse of responsibility. People power-tripping themselves into believing that it’s okay for them to make hasty, misinformed decisions when they see a number on a piece of paper that doesn’t suit their liking. The problem is people who won’t even consider that just a few dollars can make their campus safer, provide them with multicultural events and services, and create leadership opportunities and community networks.
SSFC was undermined by Student Council, but more importantly, so were student organizations, and ultimately, so were the students they serve. Why would Council members abuse their power and their system just to advance their personal political agenda over the best interests of the students? Let’s hope that’s not on the final exam.
Faith Kurtyka (fmkurtyka@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in English and religious studies. Kurtyka is also an SSFC Representative.
