Editorial

Do the Right Thing

Vote no on OSPIRG. Not only do they have their hand in your back pocket, and not only do they refuse to be honest about where your money goes, but they're also not very nice about it.

Vote no on OSPIRG. Not for our sake, but for your own.

Need it be any more complicated than that? Of course not. However, OSPIRG, the Beast Resurrected, is quite good at a few select things. While saving the environment is not necessarily one of them, taking credit for the work of others often is: the PIRGs took credit for a 1998 Republican bill expanding student aid through the federal Pell grant, not to mention the independently-created UO Campus Recycling Program.

Their Machiavellian brilliance should be duly noted. It often is, in the pages of this magazine, but there are many other reasons why we at the Oregon Commentator despise OSPIRG. We know that deep down, if you really knew what they did, you'd despise them as well. Maybe it's Munger, maybe it's the signature-gatherers, or maybe you love the Corvair - whatever it is, the facts speak for themselves. But in fact, it is none of those things.

OSPIRG is very good at obscuring the truth about their program. Many on this campus consider themselves liberal-minded and thus are more willing to grant OSPIRG a pass when their budget numbers don't add up or aren't even itemized by expenditure.

The logic goes something like this: if they don't do it, who will? The answer: take your pick!

Are we truly to believe that OSPIRG is the only environmentally-concerned organization in Oregon? Local to the UO are a half-dozen groups, such as the Coalition Against Environmental Racism and the Sustainable Business Symposium. Their combined budgets add up to a fraction of OSPIRG's, plus their money stays on this campus and benefits students directly.

On a statewide level, 1000 Friends of Oregon, a lobby carrying on the tradition of the maverick Republican former Governor of Oregon, Tom McCall. 1000 Friends of Oregon are heavily involved in statewide campaigns to preserve the land use regulations around Portland - the so-called "green belt" - and promote light rail. And they have the victories to prove it.

Furthermore, OSPIRG doesn't accomplish anything on the UO campus. More than a few former members can (and do) tell stories of signing up with the image in mind of feeding the homeless or testing the pH-level of the Willamette, only to find themselves petitioning student signatures like robots, or worse, dropped off for the afternoon in various neighborhoods across the state and told to walk door-to-door collecting donations.

Of course, you won't find that in an OSPIRG press release. What happens inside the PIRG is really quite interesting, and truth be told, it functions not unlike that of a religious cult. The new recruits are lured in by the promise of being part of something larger than oneself. A narrow-minded ideology is introduced and re-inforced; the PIRGian train of thought is unquestioned.

For example: Truly, OSPIRG supporters will tell you that they "don't really like capitalism," then freely admit that they haven't the slightest idea who Adam Smith was, or what the Theory of Comparative Advantage is about. Sociology and Environmental Studies majors should be required to take Economics classes just as Journalism majors are - it at least stands to reason that the detractors of the laissez-faire economy should at least be able to explain it.

Even more significantly cultlike is the fact that those who are involved with OSPIRG on a state level - Ben "Bunger" Unger, Jereme Grzybowski, Merriah Fairchild (they should all be on campus in the next week; go talk to them) - already know everything in this editorial. It is, of course, their in their interest to keep this information from becoming accepted by their campus volunteers - their cult members - not to mention the students on campus who merely pay the nearly 150K annual fee.

This is why posters for the anti-OSPIRG Honesty campaign (of which this magazine's editor is completely open about being Director of Communications for) are routinely covered up or taken down. Those who know the PIRG best - from the inside - are clearly afraid of the information that Honesty seeks to promote. The last thing they want is a fair and open debate on campus.

The very last thing they want is for a widespread debate on the PIRG's legitimacy. In 1999, less than a year after the students of the University denied OSPIRG's ballot measure for the first time in nearly three decades, then-ASUO President Geneva Wortman called for a "special election," without ASUO Constitution precedent, and opened the door to OSPIRG's re-entry. Following a Commentator investigation, a grievance and intervention by the ASUO Constitution Court, the election was allowed to proceed without OSPIRG's funding request. The object of the move was clear to many: refund the program during a poorly-funded, poorly-advertised special election. The lower the voter turnout, the better. The less free the flow of information, the better. This is a group you want to give a pass to, just because they pay lip service to saving the environment?

And it is lip service. They lobby for legislation that increases prices, cuts jobs - quite possibly endangering the financial means that allow you to attend the University, as any undergraduate who has a parent employed by the oil or timber industry will tell you - and bothers you while you walk to class in the morning.

Let's say it again, and maybe it will sink in this time. OSPIRG is unaccountable. The budget they submit to the ASUO each year is printed below. Take a look at it.

No one knows where this money goes. Last year the PIRG made off with a cool $128,000. Next year, if you let them, they will make off with a cooler $144,426. That's a lot of money to just allow to leave campus and disappear into a Portland law office. Why is it that the OC, just like every other incidental fee-funded group, must provide a line item budget accounting for every printer-toner cartridge, wire newspaper rack and office liquor bottle we buy? [Note to ASUO Controller: of course we're joking.]

OSPIRG does have one thing: promises. Save the environment. Sign a pledge to tell your congressman you like the arctic wildlife. Get involved politically. OSPIRG has the left on this campus deep in its pocket, to the point that supporting OSPIRG is politically correct, even when they know better. And a lot of them do.

On March 5-8, OSPIRG's ballot measure will be put to the students of this campus. If you are a student, you should plan on voting, and you should do so with full knowledge of the facts. It is the opinion of this magazine that you should vote to reject OSPIRG's funding. The activities it carries out on this campus are voluntary and benefit not at all from their massive subsidy, which, as we have said millions of times before, is not spent here.

Vote your conscience. And when you do, ask yourself if OSPIRG as a group and based on their recent behavior, has earned your money, your support, or your vote.

This budget information is available at your friendly local ASUO Controller's office.