I Hate the ASUO

Did you know that you could overthrow the ASUO? You could, with a couple of friends and enough posters stapled to the kiosk at 13th and University, and maybe even a full-page ad in this magazine, for good measure. It wouldn’t be all that much trouble, except maybe a single academic term’s worth of commitment and the cojones to pull it off.

It’s even written into state law. In fact, all the legalese you would need to justify such an effort is to be found in the first two sections of the so-called Clark Document — that being a wayward shred of state law authorizing the State of Oregon to direct a sum of money, collected by this university, to be disbursed by whatever rudderless students get caught on board this ship called the ASUO.

It reads, and I quote: “The student incidental fee has been authorized by the Oregon Legislature to provide for the ‘cultural and physical development of students.’” By that, you might think that the state house and senate have approved an unspecified sum to be spent on dim sum and pick-up basketball games — which wouldn’t really be so bad, if that were the case.

Instead, the Clark Document (Clark for Robert D. Clark, namesake of the Honors College — this will come up later, I promise — and former university president) continues as such: “The University of Oregon acknowledges the right of recognized student government, in exercise of its delegated power and through its constitution, to elect a body to make fee recommendations to the OSBHE [Oregon State Board of Higher Education]. That body is now the ASUO Senate.” The emphasis is all mine.

Read the above paragraph again, considering the italicized text. Currently, the “recognized student government” is the ASUO. So: Who is to say that the ASUO could not be knocked from its perch of ‘recognition’? Even the law itself seems to hint at a coup d’Ètat: that body is now the Student Senate. That “now,” more telling than it appears at first glance, could become a was, were the effort properly applied.

The question I put to you is: Just how legitimate can a student government be considered when a fifteen percent voter turnout is a ten-year high?

If you’re as quick as I hope you are, presuming your education at this presumably esteemed liberal arts college, then you should recognize that the legitimacy of the ASUO is only as legitimate as you say.

Imagine this: one day early in spring term, a voters’ guide surfaces, identifying candidates for various offices — in the University of Oregon Student Association (UOSA) primaries. There are posters affixed to various bulletin boards. Advertisements in both the Emerald and Commentator. A debate is held in Willamette 100. After a week of campaigning, voting booths are placed outside various administration buildings, academic halls and the student union. Voting commences.

I argue, and I think it not an unrealistic argument, that if the UOSA elections were to poll higher than those of the ASUO, that the truly “recognized student government” would have to be the one recognized recognized by the voters.

Imagine: all the hirelings and interns in Suite Four without a place to sit around and plan trips to Salem in pink highlighter pen! OSPIRG depending on door-to-door donations and bake sales to buy lobbyists! Student groups actually contributing their own money (instead of soaking Jane and Joe Incidental Fee-Payer) to the programs they care about!

And you, of course, as the ringleader of this play government, only slightly more legitimate than the current game of let’s-play-government in the EMU, would surely be voted President. So what are you waiting for?

After four years at this school, I am now finally convinced that no one working within the system as described in the Green Tape Notebook (with the possible exception of Jennifer Creighton) is really in charge. That goes double for this year.

Mostly, the wonks who populate the ASUO are twenty-five years removed from the New Left that took over student governments across the nation — because they couldn’t have the nation, but settled, instead taking over what it could — and now they haven’t the slightest idea how to keep doing what their parents did. So they keep fighting for peoples of ethnicity who will do just fine for themselves without their help. And wrenching their hands about intolerance whenever someone in a position of authority accidentally uses a term deemed politically incorrect. And getting indignant whenever the Oregon Daily Emerald runs an advertisement for the Silver Dollar Club.

The ASUO embodies the worst attributes of liberalism: it’s whiny, it’s sanctimonious, it doesn’t get anything accomplished, and most galling, they want everyone to pay for it.

I suppose I can best illustrate this contention with an extended anecdote. So I will:

Several months ago, I had the particular displeasure of arguing against the legitimacy of the incidental fee — which, if I have not so specified already, is exactly that sum of money authorized by the questionable and inconstant Clark Document — versus the current ASUO president, Jay Breslow, in front of an especially hostile Honors College colloquia. Breslow’s thesis — if you could so degrade the term as to call it that — is that the incidental fee is a justifiable tax, contributing to the benefit of the individual as well as the public, and so student government should continue collecting money from all students matriculating at the university. Or as he so eloquently put it in his opening statement: “I am absolutely in love with the incidental fee!”

To the majority of the students in the classroom, the matter was, as once-defeated ASUO Exec candidate C.J. Gabbe — unrivaled as the geekiest person to sit at my lunch table in sixth grade — is wont to say, it is an “access issue.”

Not all students have the financial ability to pay for the programs they’d like to participate in, so it makes sense to have all students contribute to a fund controlled by elected student officials, they say. So-called underrepresented groups deserve to have their diverse viewpoints known, which the fee helps facilitate, they say.

I say that I agree: it is an access issue — but not quite of the sort they imagine. I say it is an issue of letting students — on an individual, not collective basis — have access to their own money. At least make it optional — at the start of every term you could collect a partial refund on your incidental fee, so long as you are not involved with the ASUO or its programs.

This perspective was utterly anathema to them. Don’t we have an obligation to to support the community we belong to? they asked. In as open-minded and reasonable a manner as I could summon, I tried to explain: I hold that the only responsibility that any free person has to the “community” is to follow the golden rule, not interfere with anyone, and do their best in what they choose. Translated to the Eugene, Oregon campus: the cost of student programs should be borne by the participants. Is that so much to ask?

In that particular classroom on that particular day, respect for the very basic underpinnings of freedom was far more than I could expect. The student senator who led the discussion and had invited me to speak, reputed to be fiscally conservative in the EMU Board Room on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m., withdrew from the fray, and was not heard from until the end of class.

Still, I kept pursuing my line of reasoning: Many — and I would venture, most — students come to this university for an education and a degree — not to be a member of a required organization calling itself the ASUO. Breslow’s argument that the fee is an essential element of the school’s educational atmosphere is indefensible. It sure may be for Jay Breslow, who has served on various diversity and multicultural committees since he was a Hillsboro high school student. And Political Science, 3PM and Finance majors derive a real benefit from the ASUO. It puts inches on the resume, it pays more money than the same effort (not to mention results) would elsewhere, and hey, it’s the right thing to do.

Furthermore, if student government truly were so integral to one’s intellectual development — a premise so ridiculous I’m laughing beer through my nose at this very moment, but let’s pretend — then the University would certainly require some form of ASUO service before one earned an undergraduate degree.

But raw numbers alone will illustrate that the ASUO has little to offer the majority of students on this campus. As Breslow admitted during the debate, even if every student actually did get involved with the ASUO, there wouldn’t be enough money to go around. For one, red tape has a way of draining public resources, and besides, we need all that money for OSPIRG. It’s the classic tyranny of the minority described by James Madison in the Federalist Papers. Once a self-interested minority gets into power — and hence, into everyone’s wallet — what is to stop them from voting themselves rich?

Only later, while talking to a friend and former Honors College student, did I hear a telling story about the denizens of Chapman Hall: once a teacher had asked the class to divide amongst itself for the day’s discussion. The topic was — as if further debate was really necessary — capitalism versus communism. In any case, she was one of a whopping three students to defend the “capitalism” side — and one of them because he wanted to play devil’s advocate. I have no idea who Robert D. Clark was, but he must have made Dave Frohnmayer — a Jim Jeffords Republican if there ever was one — look like Pat Buchanan.

Truly, in the ivory tower of the United States, circa 2001, rational thought is dead and buried.

Just what does the ASUO think it is going to accomplish? Perhaps the single most important goal the ASUO strives for without ever getting any closer, is the promotion of one of the ugliest standbys of leftist ideology: identity politics. Conservatives are given to quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. frequently because, though he could scarcely be called “conservative” — look up his views on socialism and see what I mean — the current liberal policy on race has little, if anything, to do with his famous directive of August 28, 1963.

For instance: As of the 1999-00 school year (the most recent year for which figures were available), nearly one quarter of the student groups funded by the ASUO Programs Finance Committee were related to ethnic minorities or students of foreign nationalities, totaling $156,278. Does anyone else see how this pattern of funding is at odds with King’s dream that people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”?

Then there is MEChA, ostensibly representing Latino students, whose nickname stands for a mouthful: Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl·n. The underlying philosophy of the organization — and I quote from their Gladstone site — is that they are mindful not just of their “historical heritage but also of the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories … the northern land of Aztl·n from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.” If that passage is a little too elliptical for you, consider their motto: “For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.” Now, I’ve picked up enough EspaÒol from Sesame Street to know that it isn’t a friendly one — basically, “For our race, everything. For other races, nothing.” This differs from Naziism how?

Then you have the Black Student Union and the Women’s Center. Both organizations of a more peaceful disposition, I’m sure. Perhaps I disagree with some of their political beliefs, and maybe both groups get on the Oregon Daily Emerald’s case a little too much, but at least they haven’t declared outright war on the United States. But what are we to make of Black Women of Achievement, which rakes in $5,838 per annum? One of the things that the PFC must look out for when funding a particular group is whether or not it duplicates the services of other groups — and if someone can tell me who is represented by the BWA but not the BSU or Women’s Center, I’d be more than willing to hear them out. Perhaps the BSU and Women’s Center cater exclusively to underachievers. That must be it.

And, lest I forget, the Black Student Union even has its own graduation ceremony — so, forty-seven years after Brown v. Board of Education, integration has led to… separatism? Indeed it has. The Multicultural Center, which is the umbrella organization for all of the ethnic groups mentioned above, won the approval of a ballot measure allowing for it to set up its own body for disbursement of funds to ASUO programs. Now, you may be asking, isn’t that what the Student Senate is for? Well, yes.

Of course, it may not quite be separatism, at least not for this coming year. That’s because next year’s Student Senate will be dominated by people from the Multicultural Center. So the MCC will control not just the Clark Document-approved ASUO allocative body, but also its shadow. I’m sure James Madison wouldn’t be too thrilled by this notion.

I hate the ASUO because it is a shrill, selfish, self-righteous crowd of resume-padding 3PM students and group-thinking sociology majors. I hate the ASUO because its continued existence is explainable only by the student body’s own laziness. And just as I once hated the arbitrary national legal drinking age, I will hate the ASUO until it no longer applies to me — that is, when I graduate. Or, perhaps, until I am elected UOSA President.