Late last night, GUSA finally passed the Fall 2009 budget for all student funding boards on campus. The budget was approved in late February and has been stalling in the Senate since then. The main problem facing the budget, until last night, was GUSA President Calen Angert’s (MSB ’11) attempt to usurp some of the money other funding boards had in their reserve accounts for his own Georgetown Fund, a fund that would allow student groups to circumvent SAC and go directly to GUSA for funding.
The fact that GUSA passed the budget—albeit with little time to spare—is something positive. The problem is that it took two months and SAC threatening to cut clubs’ funding to get GUSA moving. Given the tension between GUSA and SAC over the large amount SAC and other funding boards have squirreled away in reserve funds, it is understandable that Angert would want to sidestep them. Many GUSA senators voted against the budget because it did little to address the problem of GUSA further subsidizing funding boards with already bulging coffers.
However, these legitimate concerns quickly turned into a huge conflagration, fueled by personality clashes and longstanding tensions between GUSA and SAC. Instead of going down this contentious path, GUSA should have worked for a more cooperative, consensus-based solution.
It is a good sign that there are senators who care deeply about how the student activity fee is spent, but this impasse showcases GUSA at its most petty and poorly organized. The infighting and backroom deals exacerbated the problem and highlighted GUSA’s most glaring flaw: chronic under-attendance. This semester, GUSA regularly failed to meet quorum. Although they recently elected 10 new Senators, these newbies were poorly informed about the budget issues. The debate was still dominated by a few active Senators, many of whom tended to get caught up in personal animosities.
The pettiness and sniping is nothing new, but had the budget not been passed at the eleventh hour, there would have been major consequences. Should GUSA have stalled again, the budget would have most likely gone into the hands of administrator Erika Cohen Derr. Leaving budget decisions to administrators undercuts any remaining shred of legitimacy that GUSA has. Tonight, Angert gave up his fight on the Georgetown Fund (at least for now) for the greater good of the organization he heads and the group he represents—Georgetown students. What we need is a more proactive GUSA, one that prevents these issues from become crises and passes complete and well thought-out legislation.
1.) I don’t think Erika would ever take that money into her own hands, in fact she herself has said that that would never happen. That was never a serious option, apparently.
2.) I agree, this was definitely GUSA poorly organized. But some of the blame falls on SAC, too, which chronically uses scare tactics and obstructionism (if not outright lies, in the case of how they “spent down” their reserves 25k) to get its way. Last year GUSA got all of the boards to say they’d address or spend down their reserves, SAC pledged to develop a plan for spending its reserves down to $100,000. They clearly failed to do so and at the end of the year their reserves are likely to increase again. This was never about club sports or the other boards, this is primarily about SAC, PAAC, and the Media Board.
The reserves issue should have been addressed in Feburary back when the Finance Committee had its annual budget meeting. The fact that it wasn’t addressed was why the Senate tabled the bill and asked them to meet again. The Finance Committee had two long months to get its act together and address the reserves, which they didn’t. And now, yet again almost a million dollars in student funding is being wasted.
This was mishandled by everyone, but at least GUSA was trying (poorly) to do the right thing. I’m very disappointed in SAC.
Both of the Voice’s news editors are on the editorial board. Does this strike anyone else as a conflict of interest? News editors are supposed to be objective, and editorial board members are supposed to be opinionated, and the editorial board often opines on the same issues news reports on.
Conflict of Interest, the Voice only has onew news editor at a time, and the current one (Eric Pilch) isn’t on the ed board, while the last one (Juliana Brint) wasn’t when she was news editor. I think you might be confused by different versions of the masthead.
Pretty impressive commitment to journalistic ethics, though!