H 74°, L 50° | Tomorrow: 
H 76°, L 55°For those who haven’t heard, SSFC denied the Campus Women’s Center (CWC) eligibility to receive GSSF funding for next year, which means we will lose the $100,000 annual budget we have been receiving, as well as all “non-consumable” items that were purchased with segregated fees, including our computers with thousands of dollars worth of software, our printer, our TV, our couches, chairs and tables, filing cabinets… you get the picture.
So we did what ASM leadership advised and applied for an operations grant that included all of our basic operating costs for next year, excluding salaries for staff and all expenditures on events, which can’t be covered by an operations grant. The budget we requested was approximately $38,000, and the Finance Committee clearly thought it was reasonable and fiscally responsible because they awarded the CWC $33,100. Keep in mind this is still less than a third of our current budget, and the prices we listed for things were lower than we would end up paying because without GSSF status, we would lose access to university pricing on the majority of our supplies.
But some people still thought this was too much money to give to one group, so the SSFC Legal Counsel, Kurt Gosselin, and the SSFC Secretary, Matt Manes, motioned to cut the CWC operations grant by $26,000 last night. Through debate, and a series of other motions, it ended up being cut by $16,000 or so. End result: Student Council cut the CWC’s budget but more than 50 percent, without hearing from the Finance Committee or seeing a CWC budget hearing, and they barely discussed any of the other groups before passing all of the grants.
This not only immoral and biased, but it is not viewpoint neutral, which means it’s illegal.
The best part was when chair of the Finance Committee, Matt Beemsterboer, went against his committee’s wishes and joined the misogynistic crusade against the CWC as the feigned “moderate” by proposing that they only cut the grant by about 50 percent. How generous.
We really do appreciate that we’re even receiving the $15,000 that we were granted last night. But that does not excuse the illegal and inappropriate way in which it was approved and the utter dismissal of the Finance Committee’s original decision. In every other funding decision this year, Student Council has trusted the committee’s recommendations and rarely made changes.
The worst thing about this process is that we are unable to appeal the decision, because this session of Student Council is over. I suppose we could appeal to Student Judiciary, but at this point, what would come from it? This is unjust and reeks of petty grudges. I can’t help but think that a few members of ASM had a vendetta against the Campus Women’s Center, MPOWER, or even just me. But grow up. You’ve created a horrible situation in which no one wins and all of campus loses. Congratulations.
Tina Trevino-Murphy ([email protected]) is the Program Coordinator for the Campus Women’s Center.
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This letter will go over the head of most students because less than 2% of students understand the inner workings of the student legislature.
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Tina, you are naturally upset as a result of your group experiencing cuts to its proposed budget. But your message has simply not been consistent. You helped lead the No New Seg Fees campaign and continually advocate for lowering student fees and improving access to higher education. The wheels then fall off when you make selfish exceptions to this message, advocating to raise student fees to fund YOUR own (and friends’) groups in exorbitant amounts. Such selfish exceptions in your stated principles were all over the MPOWER platform too, as well as your campaigning politics. Immaturity and misinformation stained your previous letter to the editor as well (no, your lobbying effort in DC did not pass national health reform; no, CWC is not receiving a $30,000+ ops grant; no, the Textbook Affordability Committee has not and is unable to lower textbook costs for students; etc.).
So take a step back and realize that you’ve engaged in this “petty grudge” just as much as the other side.
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Get em Tina.
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We should cut all allocable seg fees. Students can’t afford to pay for niceties that don’t benefit a majority of students. (Where’s MPOWER on this one?)
The bigger question is why we don’t have a Campus Men’s Center when men are falling behind in terms of educational attainment. It’s just not politically correct to help men at all, and some men like being on a campus that is 60% female.
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Word!
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This is such total crap. The whole year I’ve been following the funding fiasco with the CWC, and it is infuriating. And I refuse to thank ASM for being oh so gracious to provide less than 50% of the CWC’s budget.
ASM clearly does not represent and does not care about over half of this school’s population. Gosselin, Manes, Beemsterboer, and all the rest of you who voted to yet again cut down the CWC budget: You are a disgrace to this university.
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Better 50% than 0%. Stop acting as if you are entitled to the money.
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Right on, Tina. ASM is trying to score cheap political points by keeping the CWC down (MEChA can relate), but they need to get over themselves. This is not about ASM, Tina, or anyone other individuals; it’s about serving the community- the way the CWC has since 1983. Any rational person would think ASM and all their rules exist to facilitate serving the student body, and that it wouldn’t go out of it’s way repeatedly for an entire semester to impede that goal for one group. It profoundly saddens me that the pettiness of ASM, a group that supposedly represents the needs of ALL students, has now succeeded in not only making it impossible for the CWC to continue many of its vital services, but also in contributing to the culture of misogyny on this campus.
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This piece does not show how the funding reduction was illegal. I don’t get it. Just saying it is illegal does not make it so.
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You make an okay case showing that the decision of the Council was motivated by a personal (and certainly petty) grudge against you; this is apparent to anyone who has followed the ASM elections. However, your accusations of misogyny have been leveled without any evidence whatsoever. Such a serious charge is not to be made lightly. If your evidence simply rests on the fact that the deciding members were male, this is insufficient. If there are other facts at play then your article should address them. Unfortunately, your attempted character assassination obscures your much more important argument that an important campus resource has been weakened.
As a male, I think the CWC is a great resource for our campus. It provides services which are important. I find the mission of the center worthwhile, and ideally it should be supported. However, if some of its leading members - such as yourself - are going to run around making serious accusation in a very public forum, without providing ample evidence, then perhaps cutting funding is appropriate. This measure might force the CWC to re-structure under more mature leadership.
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1) If you want a campus men’s center, then go start it yourself! Student groups don’t just appear out of nowhere, they come about because a group of students decided they needed to get together and create an org that fit their needs. So men go start a campus men’s center instead of complaining about how one doesn’t exist. I’m sure the cwc would even help you start one.
2) 1:18am your comment just shows how some people at this university system do not understand the student seg fee process or the power of student advocacy. The No New Seg Fees campaign was about not paying anymore new seg fees for buildings like Union South. However student seg fees were created to fund student services, which includes student orgs like the CWC. Students help pay for the funding of all GSSF groups because these groups provide services to students that benefit at least 51% of students (there is obviously other criteria but I won’t get into that right now). So if students are usually pay for a $100,000 CWC budget through seg fees, how would asking for $33,000 raise seg fees anyway?
As for student advocacy, if no one stood up and said we want health care reform and cheaper textbooks, then we definitely would not have them. But now we have health care reform because students and other activists around the country lobbied their representatives to support it. Students next year will have the option in some of their classes for open-source textbooks, which are a cheap online version of your textbook, because groups like WISPIRG and the Textbook Affordability Committee asked faculty to consider a cheaper way to buy textbooks. So if you are able to stay on your parents health care after graduating or use an open-source textbook in a future class, you have students like Tina, MPOWER, and other student activists to thank.
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Are you really that misguided 2:29? We have health-care “reform”(which will increase medical costs according to the latest non-partisan budget analysis) because our representatives don’t represent us. The majority of Americans opposed health-care reform and elitist snobs like obama, reid, and pelosi didn’t give a damn.
I think that cutting your budget is a great way to better utilize and prevent seg fee increases. You say that GSSFs receive such large amounts of funds because they represent >51% of the student body, but i seriously doubt more than 0.5% of the student body uses your services.
Grow up and stop calling other people’s action immoral and biased because you didn’t get your way. You obviously aren’t biased at all in your belief that the cwc should receive funding.
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The fact is that SSFC and others in ASM leadership LOVE absolutely LOVE trotting their excel generated charts and graphs out before the chancellor to show how the students have reduced their portion of seg fee funds whilst the nonallocable portion has spiraled ever upwards. It is a particular point of pride, as if the juxtaposition of the decreasing allocable portion and the increasing nonallocable — and mayhaps a graph or a chart showing the tuition increases as well — justify the students’ control over a portion of seg fees. In short: “Look, the student controlled portion has been getting smaller while the nonallocable gets larger. Thusly, we are doing a good job.”
There’s a fairly intolerant spirit. Screw up some paperwork? FOR SHAME! No more eligibility for you! Go from 100,000 GSSF budget to a 30,000 operations grant? How’s an arbitrary 50% cut sound? At the end of the day, success is measured by how much you cut in relation to those who came before you.
It does make one wonder, however. With all of the cuts over the past few years, what was campus like before this spirit of extreme fiscal conservatism? Did groups like MeCHA and WISPIRG have fountains of chocalate in the foyers of palatial student org offices? Was each staff member awarded a gold encrusted ipod? Or perhaps there were fountsins of gold encrusted ipods for that matter?
Perhaps it is time for a reputable student paper to conduct a rigorous exploration of the impact this era of fiscal responsibility has had.