Editorial

4.75 Million Dollars?

The Sinkhole of Cash sure looks pretty, doesn't it? So let's say you need to reroof your house. You take out a second mortgage to afford this capital improvement. Suddenly, several things happen. 1) Your teenage son wrecks the family car; 2) your kitchen is infested with several different species of vermin; and 3) you've got a hankering to build an amphitheater. What do you do? Well, even though by the time you've taken care of the infestation and replacing the car you have almost no money left. If you're the EMU, you build the amphitheater anyway. How do you pay for it? Hit up the kids for spare change.

Maybe this lengthy metaphor has gone too far. The bottom line is this: the EMU has once again decided that they need not inform students and student governors of their plans, but they must at all costs soak those same students for every last red cent.

Two weeks ago, the EMU Board came to the Student Senate with a request for $25,000. To begin with, the request shouldn't have been heard until a week later anyway, because of the unpublicized Senate rule mandating a ten-day wait on all special requests in excess of $5000, but Senate Chairperson Michelle Johnston didn't want to penalize programs for not being aware of the rule. Of course, they don't have signs up saying "Thou shalt not embezzle" everywhere, but most people realize it's poor form.

And then, when Student Senators were told what the request was for--a sprinkler system mandated by the Eugene city government--for once they rose to the occasion. They suspected a great many things of the EMU Board, not least among them that the Board should have known about this requirement earlier, that the renovations necessitating this safety feature were probably unreasonably expensive, and that the EMU is a poorly run and managed "sinkhole of cash," as Mr. Masat likes to say.

Student Senator Dan Reid, in a fit of reason, even went so far as to say that when it's paid for by student money, we can't ask what the best, most aesthetically pleasing idea is, but rather what the best, most economical idea is.

The request was tabled for a week so that the Senate Finance Committee could have time to review it. Kim Guevarra, member of the EMU Board and representative to the Senate on behalf of the special request, informed the Senate that it was the EMU Board that was giving the Senate time to decide, and that if they didn't act immediately it would just become more expensive.

This last week, the EMU withdrew the special request altogether, drafting a new one. This one asks for $350,000 from the "Over-realized Fund," a veritable pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, at least in EMU Director Dusty Miller's twisted little mind.

So now we have it, the proof we were always looking for. The EMU Board, under the trusty supervision of Dusty "Tassels" Miller, is skilled in the arts of blackmail and douchebaggery. If you don't pay for it now, they told the Senate, we'll come back and really stick it to you. And they did.

But we can't afford another con like The Amphitheater. Soon there will be no money left in the Over-realized Fund, and students will be paying for all of the capital improvements that this campus needs or wants. It's time for the ASUO Executive and the UO Administration to refuse to rubber stamp this one--to send a clear message to the students that they should not be called upon to pay for every student government official or petty bureaucrat's pipe dream, and send an even clearer message to those officials and petty bureaucrats that they can no longer rape students out of their money. No means no. Even if you're naked.