What can student government do and does student government matter? These are serious questions, especially for the self-anointed elites (myself included) who run student government and who, unlike normal people, care about what student government does.

We’ll start with Student Congress, where I have the privilege of running the Oversight Committee. Student Congress mostly acts like one great big sugar-daddy. Every student pays a $39.00 Student Organizations Fee. About half of that fee is automatically distributed to the Student Union, STV, WXYC, and the Honor Court. The distribution of the rest of the fee is left up to Congress’ discretion. So, every week, student groups come crawling to Congress begging for funding for publications, speakers, programs, trips, etc. Congress then sets about cutting the requests down, checking the excesses, and ensuring that the money is spent responsibly. There are occasional hiccups, but the system works pretty well.

However, Congress’ work does not stop there. We currently operate under a lengthy and cumbersome Student Code. Weighing in at about nearly 100 pages (it used to be much longer), the Code governs the more arcane aspects of student government (legislative, executive, and judicial), things like committee appointments, elections, operating procedures, etc. Most people probably don’t care about these sorts of things and are largely unaffected by them (until they become involved in student government). From my experience, most of student government exists for itself, e.g. there is no ostensible reason why the Executive Branch needs an Arts Advocacy Committee, except that somewhere along the line, some student government bureaucrat thought that this was important, so he created the committee. Likewise, entities like the Student Supreme Court, if you look at past cases, adjudicate legal disputes arising between different student government entities. Occasionally, there’s a case involving a dispute over a fee or something similar, but most of the disputes are procedural and have very narrow application.

"Why Does Student Government Matter? It doesn't."

Not to beat a dead horse, but I think ASG is an example of this in extremis. You have an organization that ostensibly exists to represent student interests to the real decision makers in the UNC System. But what do they do? Precious little. Especially lately, the organization has become so obsessed with its internal procedures and operations, it doesn’t have time for anything else. Its efforts at advocacy are half-hearted. Somehow they managed to endorse the BOG’s plan to increase tuition 13.5% next year, but they also managed to do that without actually asking anyone outside of their organization what they think about the tuition hikes. They had lots of really important meetings to determine the organization’s stance on the issue, but in the end, they accomplished nothing.

So, back to the original question, “What can student government do and does it matter?” I think the answer is that student government can do a lot… about its own internal procedures, but not much else. Student government can do a lot of things that don’t matter, but very few things that do.

And then there’s the whole issue of Bhula not actually talking to anyone. While I’m pleased as pudding that he got to meet Harry Reid, how exactly does that benefit me? I’m glad that we are blessed with such leadership that he can sit through an entire meeting, supposedly representing the students of the UNC system, and not say anything. Did he just go up there to learn talking points from Harry Reid and his cronies? What exactly was accomplished with his presence there? And why, in the name of God, do we continue to fund an organization that continually fails to live up to its promise of “championing the concerns of students” while it spends thousands of dollars on itself for lavish banquets, retreats, and road trips? Enough is enough. This little misadventure to DC is only the latest episode in what has been all too characteristic of ASG. It fails to champion the concerns of students, yet succeeds in championing the concerns of itself.

Raynor with Moeser

The referendum on whether UNC should raise the student fee for student’s childcare by about $10 has been interesting to say the least. I worked on the “vote no” side of the campaign and let me tell you I feel Tim Nichol’s suit against JJ Raynor is justified.

I was involved with the painting of A-frames for our campaign. The painting of these frames took hours and I used my own paint that I spent my own money to buy. You can imagine my indignation when I discovered that the signs were stolen the next day.

I was also involved with the hanging of “vote no” signs around campus in perfectly legal locales. The next day they were torn down.

The other night I came from the library and one of the A-Frames that were stolen was back with wanted posters that had one of the student‘s face on it who was against the increase. Needless to say, I was not amused.

While all this was going on, JJ Raynor proceeded to run a “vote yes” campaign out of her executive office. And, um, yes she did.  Raynor now denies any wrong doing.  What she did wrong was use her privileges as president to promote her point of view.  Just FYI.

In other words, the DTH’s covering of this fiasco was a ridiculous waste of paper.

However, we are not here to debate the merits of direct democracy. What we are here to oppose is the fee increase itself.

We already pay $1,691.74 in student fees on top of tuition. What is $10 more, you may ask? The cost of student fees increases every year, and $10 here and $10 there starts to add up. In the past five years, student fees have increased by $446.22. We have to draw a line in the sand somewhere.

It’s been noted by a number of commentators that student fees to pay for free services are a prime force behind the increasing costs of higher education in the United States. The best move to help lower income individuals get a college education is to reduce its cost while maintaining quality in the classroom. This is best done by keeping down the costs of student fees, which do not affect the classroom.

The vast majority of UNC students do not have children. Therefore, the proposed student child care fee is designed to fund a program which will be utilized only by a very small portion of UNC students.

Because of the limited market for this program, common sense and principles of sound government and personal responsibility support the view that this program should be funded only by those who will utilize it.

That is, child care services should be funded from charges billed to those who use the services rather than charging the entire student body for a service very few of them will use.

Therefore, we ask you all to take a stand for sound, common sense management at our university, and vote against the Child Care Services Fee in 2009! You can join our group on Facebook for more updates: Stop Student Fee increases in 2009!

Apparently she cares a lot because she is working to get folks to sign a petition that will force the issue. If she is successful at getting 10 percent of the student body to sign a petition, the question will be put to a referendum.

When a girl stood up in class today and asked me to sign the petition, my initial response was to say, “Well, this is an attempt to get around a common-sense congress.” But, I do agree that it is good to have free referendums. However, this particular issue seems to be tricky.

You see, most students here do not pay their tuition out of their own pockets. So, when a decision comes before us regarding the raising of fees, many times it is of no great consequence for us to simply say yes. This is what congress-woman Taylor Holgate meant when she said, “I believe that if this goes to referendum, students will pass it.” We will pass it even if the raise is a ridiculous waste of an increase during hard economic times.

Also, the fee increase is to help out a small percentage of students who have made a conscious decision to get impregnated. It is, first and foremost, their responsibility to take care of their children. It is not my job, nor is it yours, to pay for day care or any other care when it comes to other people’s children. To bring in around $300,000 of revenue in to pay for this is simply unacceptable to me as a fiscal conservative.

So, in closing, the fee increase is a bad idea. Should we have the right to decide as a student body? You decide whether you want to decide by deciding whether to decide to sign the petition.  I say give the referedum to our parents.

How much of your student fees went to finance the Vagina Monolouges? $840.00

How much of your student fees were spent on GBLST’s Fall Drag Show which included performances by the Cuntry Kings (you women, and any decent man, should be roayally ticked at the nerve of GBLST for hiring a troup of that name!)? $887.50

Find out more about where your money is going by reading Student Government’s Annual Budget for 2008-2009. You can search the index, click on a particular student organization, and learn about how much money has been appropriated to it thus far, and where, down to the last ink pen, the money went. (For last year’s complete budget click here).

Contacts:
Finance Committee Chairman, Mike Morrill (mmorrill@email.unc.edu)
Student Body Treasurer, Pedro Carreño (pcarreno@email.unc.edu)

Poster in the Campus Y building

Failure to notice the world in which we live, getting by without discernment of even a commonsensical strain, is failure to be adequate stewards of our responsibilities.  I wager that of the thousands of students who have passed by the imposing campus Y building few have stopped to imagine what the thing is.  The other night I took the opportunity to imagine and, after hours of research, I have no idea.

The Campus Y is simultaneously a department of the university (under the Division of Student Affairs) as well as a student organization.  Or, rather, it is a collection of various and sundry student organizations.  It had its beginnings as a YMCA and YWCA in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but in the 60s and 70s it dropped the Christian part and now “seeks social justice through the cultivation of plurality.”  What does that mean exactly?  Nothing coherent I can tell you.

My first direct encounter with the campus Y came last semester when I had some business in the newly renovated building.  As I stood waiting, I admired the posters hung along the wall, strewn over everywhere.  My favorite was the one that displayed the communist flag.  “Is the Campus Y secretly a communist front group?”  I thought.  If so someone needs to work on the secret part.  The Campus Y is involved with the U.S. Social Forum, a blatantly anti-American organization, it is involved with an event entitled the Social and Economic Justice Fair, it actively fights for “worker’s rights,” it campaigns on behalf of unions, and it believes in instituting a “livable wage” (as opposed to the minimum wage) for workers.

The Y is involved in the “progressive” movement in other ways as well.  It was among the first to fight for an LGBTQ resource center back in 2002, starting a special committee, SPECTRUM, to focus on “education and outreach” for the LGBTQ community; it also came out against AIO Fraternity’s bout with the university over the right to deny people into their Christian Frat who were not Christian; it advocates for “equal access to college education” for illegal immigrants; it stands “in solidarity for the Palestinian people;” it holds a Race Relations Week in which there are such productive events as the “Mix it up Dinner” in which people of different races sit together (and feel good I suppose); also, it is decidedly anti-Iraq War.

My favorite Campus Y activities involve homelessness.  Street soccer games are put on for the homeless; members of the Campus Y “sleep in” periodically for homelessness; and the Y has begun a magazine in which the homeless can write articles about, well, homelessness (the magazine is free btw).

Perhaps most bizarre is the Campus Y’s weirdness regarding the topic of Sex.  The Y held an event entitled Carolina United on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 in which the “phrase of the night was ‘snap judgments’ as students discussed how quickly people judge others and how to avoid ignorant assumptions.”  Aside from the Barney-like parallels that make me laugh, I fear I must inform the Y that I assume any organization that offers the service of condomgrams, “condoms attached to a personalized Valentines Day message,” is not worth the spittle used to seal the perverted telegrams it sends.  The Campus Y’s official stance on fornication?  “Sex is Cool.”  (You can’t make this stuff up).

What is the Campus Y you ask?  Who the heck knows, but it sure aint the YMCA.  Rather, perhaps the Y should consider renaming itself the YPAA; the Young Peoples Atheist Association.

The billboard outside my room

“Sex is cool”  is literally the official stance of UNC (click here if you don’t believe me).  UNC makes no bones about it’s opinion when it comes to fornication as proven by Campus Health Services.  Health Services puts on events around campus that involve “improv[ing] your sexual IQ!” and “condom demonstrations and relays, trivia, and mythbusters!”  The acompanying photographs are pictures from some of the more interesting images that came of my encounter with the event.  

One is of the billboard that stares at me when I walk out of my my dorm room door.  It says, and I quote “Are You ‘About to Do the Deed?’ Well You Should Have a Battle Plan.”  Among the items tacked onto the crapy display was a phamplet entitled “How to Get it On SAFELY!”  Other fascinating literature included the “Man to Man,” and “Woman to Woman” brochures; “Three steps to Health for Gay, Bisexual, or Any Men/Women Who Have Sex With Men/Women.” The photograph of the dog having sex is from the brochure that was slid under my door advertising the event for my community.

Oh, and for the love of diversity they did have a small section devoted to abstinence; did you know that “abstinence may mean not having intercourse, although other sexual activities may be acceptable?”  Ohhhhhhkkkkkkaaayyyyy. 

Anyway, your student fees at work, in case you care…