By Mark Baumgardner, Guest columnist
This week, the Student Services Finance Committee met for what will likely be their last meeting this year. All of you should welcome this event. SSFC, unlike most legislative bodies, actually serves its constituents best when on break.
While in session this semester, your representatives on SSFC have determined that you and your friends need to forfeit nearly $3 million of your hard earned money to pay for various organizations on campus. While some of these organizations offer students SAFEwalks home at night and tutoring for difficult courses, many other organizations provide no such tangible student services. Instead, members of these organizations have used your money to take exclusive trips to southern destinations and to provide cushy jobs with little oversight for their pals.
I had the experience of seeing countless other blatant abuses of your money during my short stint on SSFC. I have always believed you and all the other students on this campus know how to spend your own money better than 16 students sitting around a table.
Within those sitting around the SSFC table, there are always two groups. Some representatives truly represent students and work for responsible spending, but many representatives serve on SSFC in order to funnel obscene sums of money to themselves and their friends.
Earlier this semester, an unusual situation occurred. In a drastic change from past years, the majority of students serving on SSFC were truly interested in fiscal responsibility and accountability. Like many areas of life, the more things change, the more things stay the same. If ASM Council approves the SSFC budgets, your segregated-fee bill for next year will be barely dented and the fiscal abuses will continue.
In many cases, corruption and fiscal abuse occur because of the people in office, and not due to the system itself. Faith Kurtyka, one of my former colleagues on SSFC, has written two columns in this newspaper ranting and raving about what a great system we have. In addition to allowing special interest groups to abuse thousands of dollars each year, this “great system” ties the hands of any fiscally responsible student who wants to serve on SSFC and attempt to curtail the abuse. In this case, the corruption results from both the system and certain members in office.
More than two years ago, in response to court orders, the SSFC fee-allocation system was changed to mandate that all funding decisions occur in a viewpoint-neutral manner. Unfortunately, those receiving the funding wrote the rules.
The rules essentially guarantee that all groups who wanted money would get it, provided that they had received money during the past two years. Conveniently enough, the past two years at that time were controlled by the UNITY party.
The rules also guarantee any group unsatisfied with the amount of money awarded to them their day in the court of Student Judiciary. Even worse, the rules allow unsatisfied groups to ask for the removal of SSFC members. This is akin to the many recipients of government subsidies removing members of Congress after receiving inadequate funding. As someone who had his seat on SSFC confiscated because of these absurd rules, I am particularly sensitive to the flaws in the system.
This year, six groups were denied funding due to criteria violations. Oddly enough, each of these groups filed complaints concocting ridiculous reasons why SSFC denied them funding based on their viewpoint. One of these groups (the Labor Center) claimed that I did not give them a fair hearing since I am an engineering student. In four of the six cases, the Student Judiciary ruled that their claims were without merit.
The only two organizations that had their eligibility decisions reversed, MEChA and DES, are both “student-of-color” organizations. Both of these organizations illegally spent student money in various ways, making them automatically ineligible for funding. However, during the hearings, members of these organizations completely obfuscated the eligibility criteria issues and claimed racism on the part of anyone opposing them.
The Student Judiciary sided with MEChA and DES and completely ignored their blatant abuses of your money. In short, these two decisions prove “student-of-color” organizations at this university have the license to steal and are completely unaccountable for the way they spend other students’ money. These organizations simply play the race card when fiscally responsible students demand accountability.
Additionally, it should be noted how Student Judiciary operates. During the MEChA hearing, charges of viewpoint-neutrality violations were added and sustained against Drew Horn, another one of my colleagues on SSFC. Student Judiciary didn’t inform Horn of the charges against him until after he was found guilty.
Student Judiciary refused to hear the appeal of this decision. Additionally, Jordan Green, the vice chief justice of Student Judiciary and the author of the MEChA decision, is currently illegally serving on Student Judiciary. A court system that refuses to protect the individual due process rights and allows illegal judges to decide cases is dangerous and tyrannical.
What troubles me more is that the Student Judiciary, which is the body in charge of administering viewpoint-neutrality, cannot come to a consensus in many cases as to what actually constitutes a viewpoint-neutrality violation.
Instead, SSFC members are arbitrarily given warnings and removed from office by votes of 2-1. In actuality, underneath the appearance of an impartial judicial process, is nothing more than a court of public opinion motivated by politics.
Considering the mess that the current system has created, it’s clearly time for a new fee-allocation system at this university. The easiest way for SSFC to comply with viewpoint-neutrality orders is for them to only allocate student money to organizations that provide true services.
Groups that exist to advance agendas and viewpoints should start raising money on their own, rather than having SSFC fund them on the backs of students. An optional segregated-fee system that forces groups to do their own fundraising is long overdue.
When writing the First Amendment to the Constitution, our founding fathers gave everyone the right to free speech. However, they gave nobody the right to be heard. For this reason, contrary to what many ASM representatives tell you, no person or organization has the right to take the property of others in order to make their speech heard. Instead of bowing to this artificially created “right,” it’s high time that the governing agencies at this university start respecting the true property rights of students and enforcing fiscal responsibility and accountability.
Mark Baumgardner ([email protected]) is a senior in electrical engineering and a former SSFC representative.
