Photo: Ikeda
Commentary
Here Lies the ASUO
The ASUO is dead! Long live the ASUO!
As a student of this public university for four years, I've walked through the EMU breezeway enough times to remember what it looked like before The Buzz, or even the amphitheater. What has remained the same though, is those windows adorned with liberalist dogma, and otherwise like-minded political spam that is the ASUO. Freshmen apathy filled me with the ideals that real democratic wars were waged in that office, battles to protect student rights, freeze tuition and get more soda machines on campus in easily accessible places (such as in the new law school). Experience has lead to understanding though, as I now, a few years older, realize that the ASUO is nothing more to me than another $500 1 a year I have to shell out to get my diploma. What exactly is the ASUO? Why do I give it half a grand each year? How exactly do they legitimize their office space when a full-fledged Joggers could happily fit itself in that nice piece of real estate?
The ASUO, Associated Students Union Organization 2 (or maybe the Allied Soviets United with OSPIRG, or Always Study Unique Oppression), promotes itself as the "voice of the people!" and being united and backed by the voice of the students on campus, working to create diversity, better relations with DPS, Johnson Hall, and getting more student tickets for football games. It's been the same ever since I can remember. You can always find statistics released that the ASUO is doing its job so well; it's even been invited to co-chair congressional hearings. And somehow they tie themselves to student consumption of alcohol and drugs, and remarkably the current administration is able to prove (via interviewing the substance free hall 3), that they were able to curb drinking to the point where only 2 percent of the campus has ever consumed a mind-altering substance and sorely regretted it. The president and vice president (if there is one) serve as the poster children for each and every one of us. When the world looks at UO students, they don't see Scott Austin 4; they see (currently) Jay and Holly.
So now that you know what the ASUO strives to be, let's look at what it actually does. It allocates funds. Remember the 500 bucks mentioned above? That's an incidental fee that you pay each year as part of your tuition. There are almost 17,000 students on campus paying into this slush fund. That's a heck of a lot of money.5 The ASUO can fight for diversity, equal rights, DPS friendliness, etc. as much as it wants; my realization is that it can't actually accomplish any of it. What it can do is use your hard-earned cash to help benefit the campus, and thusly your education, which is what your incidental fees are supposed to be for. Each year the ASUO gives parts of it to: (1) the PFC, (2) the APFC (or whatever) and to (3) the EMU.
(1) The PFC is the big one, it allocates funds to each and every student group on campus that applies for this student aid.
(2) the APFC as far as this intrepid reporter could find out, is responsible for purchasing things such as student tickets.
(3) The EMU takes the percentage that it's given and immediately squanders it. (More on this later.)
Every student group on campus eventually gets a trickle down from this massive wad of green, and uses it for whatever means it deems necessary. So for the average student, they can choose from pro-life organizations to pro-choice, from every nationality to every sport known to man. Do you really enjoy golf? Are you interested in (insert a nationality here)?6 Well, you're funding them with your money! Aren't you pleased about this? I am too! In the words of a student I talked to as I was writing this:
"What's ASUO?" the student asked.
"The student government organization on campus," I replied.
"They need to promote themselves better, I had no idea they existed."
"They're on the front page of the Emerald everyday."
"Not everyone reads the Emerald." (This person is now my hero.)
My point is that the majority of this campus does not interact with the ASUO whatsoever. Most students just attend school to get their degrees and to get out into the real world. They don't need their money being allocated to OSPIRG so they can send 95 percent of it to Portland lawyers, and then make a cardboard cut-out of a polar bear, have hippies sign it (with neon ink, no doubt), and then mail it (UPS air no doubt) to Exxon to discourage them from continuing their business. Now the question at hand is not about how the money is allocated, but why the ASUO is the one that is in charge of allocation and why the ASUO receives almost $200,000 they don't deserve. Student government on this campus is dead. They strive to attain goals, but ultimately accomplish nothing. Only those who are employed by the system benefit from the ASUO through stipends. Those who are still not convinced need only to look at the election turnouts in the past four years to notice that less than 10 percent of the student body turned out to vote in each election.7
No one cares anymore! The University of Oregon has come to accept that the ASUO does nothing more than twiddle its collective thumbs and pray that for one whole year, someone doesn't get caught squandering funds. Take the EMU for instance (I told you I'd get back to it). Have you ever seen the golf cart in the cage in the breezeway? That was bought with your student fees so that the EMU staff can get around campus easier. Therefore, it's yours. No, honestly! Feel free to hotwire it and go for a cruise down 13th Avenue! Don't believe it? Ask them to furnish receipts of the purchase order--they haven't done so, up to this date. Also, take a stroll by the EMU Ballroom and the newly refurbished river rooms and hear the rumors that each chair cost $500. Sound like fiscal responsibility? Sound like something you want your student fees going toward? Not to me.
The student fees are supposed to enhance your education on campus. The Oregon Commentator has a long-standing history of pointing out OSPIRG's blatant violations of that simple fact, yet year after year the ASUO does it's best to get funding for the Environmental Protection Agency.8 That argument notwithstanding, the ASUO has failed the simple task of being "the voice of the people" by standing guard over the fund to ensure that it is used in the best way possible to better the university and the education the students receive. Tally that in the same category that it has, for the past several years, failed to garner the interests of at least 15 percent of the student body, and you have a simple fact chalked on the sidewalk right next to Ryan's slogan, announcing that the ASUO has outlived its usefulness. Scott Austin ran for president last year with the goal of disbanding 95 percent of the positions currently in place. Little did he know how much a visionary he was, for the future holds just that for student government. Apathy is a strong tool when used correctly, and in the future, expect to look back at your alma matter and applaud the tents staked outside the EMU demanding justice, or at least their $500 back.
1. $504.25 to be exact, or a grand total of 69.17 sixers of Corona (Source: Sports Illustrated).
2. Or something.
3. The one right about the Public Safety office.
4. Precautions have been taken (thank Johnson Hall).
5. 1,164,383.56 sixers of Corona (without your Safeway Club card).
6. Me neither.
7. Source: The Amphitheater Knob. See interview.
8. And they still screw up when they get funding back. The Surfrider Foundation does more for the environment with their annual beach cleanups than OSPIRG has ever done.
Brian Ouellette, a senior majoring in Political Science, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator