Opinion: Column
SSFC right on; ASM muddles on as year ends
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Also by Sam Clegg:
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- Alcohol make smart concession for business (October 29, 2009)
- Lunch trays signal end of America (April 30, 2009)
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Yes, it’s belated. Yes, I have been told, and argued myself, that no rational human being could possibly give the most trifling of shits about this university’s student government.
But given the impending end of a year that saw the Associated Students of Madison’s most ambitious effort at reform go down in the lukewarm flames of misinterpretation, the succeeding months of silence beg the question: How has our student government defined itself? What, in the absence of real reform, did ASM do?
As always, the fundamental concern with the organization has been, well, that it is difficult to really discern what was accomplished because it is so difficult to care. Indeed, with a student turnout of 8.3 percent in an election that saw the most comprehensive effort to seize control by any strong ideological group in recent history, no one can accuse ASM’s members of obsessive outreach.
And yet, in the absence of creating a strong institutional paradigm, ASM’s Student Services Finance Committee’s budgetary efforts shed a good degree of light on what the group’s overriding philosophy has been for the past year. That message has been one of relative — and welcome — fiscal conservatism.
Take SSFC’s decision to deny funding for Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow. Already written off by the majority of informed students as a clan of right-wing hacks, the group outdid itself with a recent pamphlet in which it bizarrely linked Earth Day to a Leninist plot.
Pamphlet and McCarthyite worldview aside, when the SSFC denied funding for the neoconservative goon squad, it was making a decision that indicates one step in the right direction has been followed by another. According to former Chair and current Student Council member Kurt Gosselin, CFACT was denied funding for two major reasons.
First of all, they forgot a bunch of paperwork. Kind of essential when you are requesting tens of thousands of dollars of somebody else’s money.
However, the primary reason for denying funding to CFACT, along with denying five other applicants, is the organization failed to provide a direct service to students. Their main objective as a group seemed, to the committee, to emphasize bringing speakers to campus. And given their inability to demonstrate even a minimum of intellectual integrity with their own advocacy, one can only wonder as to who CFACT would consider qualified to speak in the coming year.
Gosselin indicated this denial on the basis of a dearth of real services to the student body has been fundamental since ASM adopted this approach last year. And the aggregate results reflect this. Overall, the amount of money doled out by the General Student Services Fund declined by $300,000 for next year’s budget. Part of this was the result of cutting certain groups off the payroll; the rest emanated from SSFC’s effort to curve the spending of certain groups while continuing to fund them. The Multicultural
And while ASM clearly has an image problem, a coherence problem and a preponderance of ideologies that may once again drag intellectual bickering to the fore at the expense of competence, when it comes to spending your money, SSFC has shown it deserves some respect. Students deserve the highest degree of accountability when their money is dispensed to groups, especially when the possibility of those groups being certifiably insane is so real. While CFACT’s debacle is only one extreme example of the fiscal clusterfuck that could have ensued had our budding bureaucrats not done their jobs, it is a pleasant relief to see a measure of responsibility. And no, coverage of ASM will not undergo a sudden revelation. Our student government will remain, in most aspects, a subject of derision or non-recognition. But at least the money you don’t know you give to SSFC is in responsible hands.
Sam Clegg (sclegg@badgerherald.com) is a sophomore majoring in economics.
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IP hash: 31b46e83
Very nice piece Sam, although I think ASM overall deserves more credit for what it has done this year (fixed snow removal problems, gained student access to university parking lots for homeless night, opened the Student Activity Center, and worked to broaden the university’s working definition of diversity, among other issues). Also, thank you for actually taking time to understand SSFC and our process.
-Carl Fergus, SSFC Chair
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wow, this article is pretty off. maybe CFACT got denied this year, but the service criteria that were developed at length last year were abused and misconstrued. did you attend a single meeting? did you hear members apply the criteria (cough cough: kyle szarzynski)? at least you could have obtained the recordings and actually listened to a meeting. it’s pretty clear that this is a naive understanding of ssfc this year.
ssfc has made strides, but the piece is disappointing
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Wonderful Article! Down with CFACT!!!
CFACT also collected petitions this semester to put recycling bins in the res halls…the res halls already have recycling bins. Dumb fuckers
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SSFC deserves more credit than they get. As a leader of a student org, I know that their work makes student life on campus much more active than it would be otherwise. Cheers to them finally getting a positive editorial.
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This is the most biased piece of crappy writing I have ever seen in my life. Talk about one sided! Did you even TRY to get the other side? Doesn’t seem like it. You should be ashamed of yourself. Your little “article” belongs in a tabloid along with all the other garbage that’s filled with lies.
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ASM does not deserve any more credit than it has already been given. I feel that the SAC would have been opened without any problems whether ASM participated or not. ASM does absolutely nothing of value for this campus as a whole.
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Gosselin has just been power grabbing all year.He’s not interested in students - just his own power. I’d watch out for his and Paulson’s antics on Friday.
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SSFC has been threatening and lacked transparency all year. How can they boast about reducing student fees when they’ve bullied groups all year? They should be held accountable - and not praised for a small reduction in fees.
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3:10pm- I agree 100%. there needs to be more transparency overall. I’d like to know where my student fees money goes. the SSFC has too much power. This past year 4 students decided where thousands of dollars should go.
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Any examples of said bullying, Mr/Ms anon?
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People here can creepily bash Kyle for his SSFC service if they want. The funny thing is that he probably earned more respect from GSSF members then any other SSFC member. I am a member of a GSSF and Kyle was the one member that was interested in listening to our concerns and looking at things from our perspective. As for Kurt, there was a reason he resigned a few months ago…
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Kyle probably earned respect from GSSF members because he rarely ever voted to cut funding. In fact, I recall a story I once heard that Kyle approached a GSSF group member asking what line item he should cut and by how much, because he “needed to cut something” to avoid suspicion. Of course any GSSF group, except for those with conservative views, would love Kyle. He gave them whatever they wanted!
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5:09, Really?
Cuz I’m pretty sure no other SSFC member is being named in a federal lawsuit against the University.
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So some radical views are OK and others are not? I challenge you to read any documents from MEChA and not to call them hacks.
Lenin’s birthday/Earth day = bad calling for the expulsion of people of European decent from North and south America = good ?
http://www.geocities.com/mechauwmadison/documents.html
IP hash: 855504a0
“SSFC deserves more credit than they get. As a leader of a student org, I know that their work makes student life on campus much more active than it would be otherwise. Cheers to them finally getting a positive editorial.”
ASM IS the reason you have a student activity center. It had been pushing for it well before you even applied to this school. Know your history.
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Thanks for this article. SSFC does a lot (and I mean A LOT) of work in order to ensure that all of our seg fee dollars are not being wasted. They deserve credit for that!
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I’ve come to the conclusion that no groups funded through the SSFC funding stream do anything useful. Womens’ center gives our free condoms sure, but with all the money we spend to employ those people we could get a whole bunch more (don’t know why we need that many but the point suffices). And does anyone one this campus not involved in Mecha or MCSC actually know what these groups do? $273,000 for what?? And here’s the real kicker, if we got rid of these groups we could also get rid of 90% of students and staff in ASM, that would save us some real money! Maybe not a bad pretense for a slate?
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I totally agree that SSFC lacked transparency. All of ASM will lack transparency if Gosselin, Paulson, and Junger try to take the top seats- chair, vice-chair, and nominations- tomorrow. Then they’ll spend all next year forming an elite goverment that blocks anyone who doesn’t agree with them.
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This article is right on. I look forward to debate/discussion tomorrow.
It is my personal opinion that FACES will not get many leadership positions. I wish them the best of luck, however I believe they represent GSSF groups (big student orgs) and not the student body. As a member of Student council they will have to hear some budgets/give final approval so I want to know they will fiscal conservatives.
I encourage my letters and science reps to vote in moderates for leadership.
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Most groups that do receiving funding don’t do a damn thing for students. Let’s be honest. What do these groups do with their massive amounts of money? print some flyers, buy a ton of stuff for themselves, and then hold one event. that’s bs. Give me my money back.
IP hash: ffef6da3
sam needs to research better. CFACT is one of the only organizations that is constantly doing things throughout the year….at least they do stuff, even if you disagree with it. Most groups do nothing- they just hide in their offices and throw themselves a big party at the end of the year.
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Sam-
“…they forgot a bunch of paperwork.” I have signed a statement in opposition to that, I witnessed the completed paperwork. I take your statement as an assertion that I am a liar. I am not.
I’m a Junior here at the UW, and the campaign coordinator in CFACT for the Environmental Economics campaign.
Presenting classic liberal ideas is a service to students, as they are constantly bombarded with government apologist excuses for intervention into markets, and we offer an alternative.
We also hold campus clean ups, I held one today- we filled a 30 gallon bag full of trash from library mall. Every member of CFACT gets their hands dirty to keep this campus clean.
The issue of funding is not that we did or did not get money, but that WISPERG got funding and we did not.
We are of the viewpoint that using government force to control people is not only immoral but inefficient and ineffective.
That viewpoint, that individuals are sovereign, is one under attack by collectivists of all stripes. We are fighting back for the cause of human rights- life, liberty and property. Quaint concepts? I don’t think so.
Freedom IS moving forward.
IP hash: 469c8004
lolzerz. STALIN=EARTH DAY. how could you defend spending money on that? give it upppp cfact
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The problem with GSSF groups is this. Everyone knows, but few involved in the system want to admit it: all GSSF groups are not created equally. What GUTS, WSUM, and MCSC do and represent are very different from what groups like CFACT, Roman Catholic Foundation, WISPRG, and Vets for Vets do and reprsent. You can tell by who gets funding every year. Ever year, WSUM will be a GSSF group. Losing a service like GUTS would be unthinkable. Every modern day campus recognizes the value of a student-led groups like MCSC that focused on issues related to diversity. But the services provided by other groups are not so integral to the university. CFACT and WISPIRG do some fairly significant and important things on this campus. But do we need to pay thousands of dollars for people to hold trash bags on library mall, when there are plenty of garbage cans and recycling bins on every street corner on campus?
SSFC is the most useful part of ASM. But it really isn’t needed. There really are four categories of what we need to fund with seg fees: Academic Services like GUTS, Diversity services like MCSC, Student Activity Services like WSUM, and Personal Services like Sex Out Loud and CWC. There should be funding for those four streams, and groups who meet certain requirements should be apart of those specific streams. Finance Committee should then apportion them funds accordingly.
But every year this charade will continue. We know what groups truly deserve it. CFACT and WISIRG are different sides of the same coin. Funding one while holding back from the other shows the role that tenure has played in the process. WISPRG will never not be funded, even though its service is not worth every student paying for like GUTS or WSUM is.
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Mr. Cox’s assessment of the situation is relatively truthful and correct, the only thing I disagree with is that the MCSC group should get funding because they are a diversity group. Diversity in ideology is just as important on every campus and should never be overlooked. This university has professors who preach liberal ideology everyday in political science courses, having an outlet for those who disagree with them is important…
Overall the system is fundamentally flawed and CFACT got screwed over by a few over zealous kids who dislike a group for little more than their ideology. It’s also very disappointing that an Editor is allowed to make broad accusations and all encompassing statements about an entire group of students whom he has never met, researched or even talked to.
I would love to see the response from CFACT about this article but from what I have heard, they have filed a lawsuit against the university and are unsure if a response explaining all the details and biased points of Clegg’s article would potentially harm their case or not… maybe we will get lucky and their leadership will be as blundersome and reckless and Clegg, but I highly doubt it…
IP hash: b9a6dca0
Speaking of transparency, try to find out when this meeting to elect the new chair and other leadership will be held. It’s 5:45pm on the day of the mtg and despite ASM’s bylaws indicating that a meeting notice and agenda should be posted 24 hours before the meeting, there is no mention of this meeting anywhere on the ASM website or posted in or around the ASM office.
ASM is in violation of it’s own bylaws, which can be found at www.asm.wisc.edu/bylaws. How is this fair to the members of ASM? How are we supposed to participate in our own student government?
1.04(2)- Public Notice 1.04(2)(a)- ASM bodies must post an agenda outside the ASM office and notify members and those with business before the body via email of a meeting 24 hours before a meeting of the body.
1.04(2)(b)- The Student Council may by two-thirds vote approve policies governing the public notice of ASM bodies above and beyond 1.04(1)(a).
1.04(2)(c)- Every public notice of a meeting of an ASM body shall set forth the time, date and place of the meeting, in such form as is reasonably likely to apprise ASM members thereof, identify all bills, resolutions, main motions, or other legislation that will receive a vote at the meeting by number, if any, and a brief description of content or effect and further identify other subject matters in such form as is reasonably likely to apprise ASM members thereof, including an explanation that complete information on such bills, resolutions, main motions or other legislation is available in the ASM office.
1.04(2)(d)- If an emergency or difficulty not engendered by the failure of an ASM officer, appointee or employee to comply with this section requires that a matter be considered without public notice at a meeting of an ASM body, then any action taken must be submitted for ratification at the next regular meeting of that body.