Not Worthy

GTF-You

There is an insidious group of obtuse minded laggards who inhabit this campus like an infestation of squawking turkey buzzards, befouling our minds and classrooms with a stupefying amount of academic chicanery and jabbering nonsense. Ladies and gentlemen, I speak of none other than our graduate teaching assistants whose pompous and affected attitudes toward undergraduates is petty and wrong-headed.

The dim-witted pedagogical idiot savants of this unfortunate University, besides engaging in a nauseating amount of academic back-scratching and professorial ass kissing, display a pattern of vainglorious and arrogant behaviors and attitudes toward undergraduates, which are both insolent and insulting. While their voluble put-downs are something I would normally find amusing, or even agree with, the fact is that it says much about the level of concern the University's GTFs have with teaching, which is what we pay them for. These state employees represent the dry-lot of noble academic integrity and the decline of the American education system as a whole.

The corpus delecti, as it were, are the conversations I overhear regularly. For example, in my class I cannot help overhearing them as they huddle after my lecture class like humpbacked manservants, lamenting the lack intellectual prowess of our class, their other classes, the university at large, and the world in general. "These kids are so dumb!" I hear one say. "I know!" another agrees. "I hate when they come to my office hours and ask dumb questions!" says another, outraged that 18-year olds might actually still have some things to learn.

Later that day I see another group of GTFs, the Larry, Curly and Moe of the Intelligentsia, again earnestly discussing why their students were so mentally inferior to persons such as themselves. They spend at least ten minutes whining about "those stupid kids," outraged that they're forced to actually teach this unruly bunch of boobs and cretins. The pretentious and priggish vapidity of these petty academics is an affront to tuition-paying undergraduates who foot the tuition, fees, and living expenses of these loathsome and artless buffoons.

Most students spend their undergraduate years - as well as a huge chunk of money - learning, growing up, and becoming intellectually aware. And if teachers, whether they be GTFs or professors, are incapable of understanding this, then I for one want my money back.

Fund Raise the Roof

Unless you're a member of a student group, you've probably never even heard of a fund-raising account. To fill you in, every group has a line item in their budget specifically for money the group raises on its own. And, since any money in that account comes from the blood, sweat and tears of the members of that group, the fund-raising account amounts to a discretionary fund for the group to spend as it will, free from the restrictions of the rest of their incidental fee-funded budgets.

Like any other program, the ASUO Executive has such an account - as well as the problem of filling it. Of course, it could be argued that they have greater resources to bring to bear on that problem than almost any other group. The Exec. staff alone, which consists of about 25 positions, far outstrips the personnel most other programs can muster to write grants, search for donors, or pursue sponsorships. Now, consider that one of those staff positions (titled, appropriately enough, the "Fundraising Coordinator") is dedicated solely to dealing with exactly those concerns. Factor in that the Exec. has a monopoly on the Street Faire, a perennial cash cow, and the office is potentially a fundraising juggernaut.

Nevertheless, the Exec. is less than the sluice gate of liquid assets it might be. In fact, the Exec's grip on the fundraising account seems tenuous at best. A large part of the problem stems from a an accounting discrepancy that Bill Miner and Ben Unger, ASUO president and vice president, and Kelli McCartan, Fundraising Coordinator, inherited from last year's administration. According to Jeff Nunes, who held McCartan's position last year, several errors in calculation nearly bankrupted the fund-raising account. "We were just barely in the clear," Nunes said. "[T]here were some entries in the books that got added instead of subtracted."

Now, however, the fund-raising account is back on its feet, thanks mainly to the Fall Street Faire, which netted around $9,000 for the Exec. With the current balance hovering around $8,000, McCartan is confident that the Exec has put accounting errors behind them. "We're really doing much, much better," she said.

So, what does the Exec. do with this not-insubstantial amount? "I think the main things we focus on are program co-sponsorships, which is when programs come and ask for money. They go to the Student Senate, they go to Student Life. They come to ASUO," Unger said.

To these ends, the Exec has most recently spent money on co-sponsorship of groups such as Model United Nations, the infamous "rape-prevention" urinal screens, the wildly successful concert at the beginning of the school year, and sweatshirts for its staff and volunteers. As a rule, the Exec. does not shell out more than $200 for any given co-sponsorship or project, and often much less than thatunless they're spending it on themselves. The welcoming concert cost around $2,000 and the sweatshirts for the Exec. staff came in at a nice round $813. In contrast, the much-touted urinal screens cost a total of $722, only $200 of which came from the Exec, and Model United Nations was granted $50. Miner and Unger defend these hefty expenditures as part of a visibility campaign for the Exec. and the ASUO in general. "We spend [fund-raising money] on staff, workshops, and we spend it on good representation of ASUO," Unger said. The two credit the concert and the shirts with making the ASUO more visible to students in general, as well as contributing to an influx of volunteers seeking to get involved with student government.

Even so, none of these expenditures can conceivably bring anything back to fund raising itself. The benefits of increased awareness and involvement on the part of the average student aside, it seems some of the money could be spent on finding more money - money that could then be used to help bankroll new and better projects, or perhaps even keep the incidental fee down. Unfortunately, it seems this year's Exec, much like all the administrations before them, are more than content to rest complacently on their laurels and let the Street Faire bring in just enough money to keep them afloat. This, more than any accounting errors or intra-office miscommunications, is the problem with the Exec's fundraising account.