Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Who Speaks for the Senate?
Short answer: In general, the Senate does.
In our last post, we briefly mentioned how the ASUN's statement regarding alleged workers' rights violations by a manufacturer of Russell Athletic apparel, of which the ASUN Bookstore is a customer, raised some interesting issues because of who signed onto the message. Sen. Brandon Bishop (Liberal Arts), who is the Senate's parliamentarian and chairman of the Phantom Committee (Interim Operations Committee), signed on to the statement with ASUN President Eli Reilly.
The statement said that "members of the Associated Student (sic) Senate have conducted thorough research and analysis" of several reports alleging Russell Athletics' misconduct. The statement went on to say that "the Associated Students of the University have instructed the ASUN Bookstore to cease all orders of Russell Athletic merchandise. Furthermore, Marie Stewart[,] the Manager of the Associated Student (sic) Bookstore has been instructed by the Association to search for a new supplier of Wolf Pack Merchandise." The message also relays that "[a]t the instruction of the Association, the Bookstore will cease ordering from Russell, all reserves of merchandise from Russell Athletic will continue to be sold by the Bookstore as to not impact scholarship funding for the Association."
The message concludes that "[u]pon the conclusion of the Senate of the Associated Students investigation into the actions of Russell Corporation a final recommendation will be released," presumably to follow up on a recommendation request from the President of the University (a recommendation regarding what specifically is unknown).
The statement raises a few issues. First, the statement, in several places, mentions that the ASUN has directed its bookstore manager to stop ordering from Russell Athletic, to search for a new supplier of apparel, but to sell off all of the inventory in stock, and that once all Russell stock has been sold, the purchase or sale of Russell gear is banned. Under what authority, explicit or implicit, did President Reilly have to unilaterally direct to the bookstore these policies? Very little statutory law enacted by the Senate discusses the formal relationship between the bookstore and the government of the Association. What little law does exist defines reporting and budget requirements. So the question remains, does the President have authority over the bookstore?
If you're of the view that the bookstore is part of the executive branch of ASUN, and that the bookstore manager reports to the ASUN President, then it would be reasonable to assume that the ASUN President has authority to direct the manager what to do, who to use as suppliers, what to buy and sell, etc. However, the relationship isn't that simple.
In reality, the bookstore manager is just another University administrator. She reports to the Associate Vice President of Student Life services, Gerald Marczynski, the same person to whom the director of the Associated Students/Student Activities, Sandy Rodriguez, reports to. The Associated Students "owns" the bookstore, true, but more formally the relationship is closer to how the student body of the University "owns" the student union: the Board of Regents hold it in trust for the ASUN. With that understanding, the relationship between ASUN and its bookstore, and the President and the bookstore's manager, gets a little fuzzy.
Let's compare it to a similar relationship: ASUN to its director, Sandy Rodriguez. The director of ASUN is also the director of the University unit known as Student Activities. It's a fine distinction, one that even we don't have a firm grasp on--it's hard to tell where ASUN ends and Student Activities begins. We do know that ASUN foots the bill for all of it. Rodriguez reports to Marczynski in the same way that Stewart (the bookstore manager) does. However, there is an implicit understanding that the ASUN director's job is to carry out the day-to-day functions of the Association, under the direction of the Association's leadership (i.e. the elected and appointed student officers). It shouldn't be much of a stretch to believe that the relationship should work the same way with the bookstore and its manager.
More reality: historically, ASUN has left the management, operation, and policy choices regarding the bookstore to its management. Think of it like this: ASUN is the owner but leaves the management up to someone else. Thus, it should be rare for the owner to intervene in the management of the operation.
It's pretty clear that ASUN owns the bookstore. It's less clear to what extent ASUN has authority over its operation. It's not inherently unreasonable to state that the ASUN President has the authority to direct the bookstore to do certain things. However, given that the ASUN Senate has never defined the relationship, or put into law the current relationship, the ASUN President is acting in a gray area.
Now, as far as the Senate is concerned, this should be a big clue to wake up and legislate. The Senate is the policy making branch of the Association, and it should make some policy defining the relationships, especially respecting the ASUN President's authority over the bookstore.
This finally brings us to Sen. Bishop. The statement talks about how the Senate has "conducted thorough research and analysis" of the issues surrounding Russell. The message seems to imply that the Senate had some say in directing the bookstore to take the aforementioned actions regarding Russell Athletic merchandise. Notice that the statement doesn't say that "I (President Reilly)" or "we (Reilly and Bishop)" have directed the actions. It says "the Association" has.
The fact that Bishop signed off on the statement would seem to imply that the Senate was behind it, yet (as far as we can tell) the Senate has taken no action on this item. The Phantom (Interim) Committee has only discussed the matter. Keep in mind, the Interim Committee has no authority to do things on its own. It's just like any other Senate committee: it takes the Senate's action to give effect to a committee's recommendations. Since the Senate has not acted on this, it seems clear that the Senate is not behind this statement.
Thus, it would appear that Sen. Bishop was a little overzealous in attaching the Senate to it. If Bishop was merely signing onto the parts of the statement indicating that the Senate was investigating, that would be fine, but he signed onto the whole statement. In that case, it might have been better to release two statements: one defining the Senate's role and the other discussing the actions Reilly took.
Another aspect is that the Interim Committee doesn't have any inherent authority to initiate actions. Under the original authorizing resolution adopted during the 75th Senate Session (S. Res. 75-29, page 221 here), the Interim Committee has "the authority specifically to consider legislation from any Standing Committee or discharge any legislation from any Standing Committee with the consent of the Standing Committee chairperson." It appears that the Interim Committee only has authority to consider stuff the other standing committees were handling at the time the Interim Committee existed. Notice the consent of the committee chair involved is required for the Interim Committee to handle a matter. Even under a more expansive view, the Committee can only do things that other committees can do with the consent of the appropriate chair. This is to prevent the Interim Committee from unilaterally depriving a committee of its jurisdiction. Remember, the purpose of the Interim Committee, according to the original resolution, is "to conduct specific business of the Senate Committees during times of break."
Now, as we previously covered here, the Interim Committee right now has no real legal authority because it was never properly constituted. So all of this discussion is pretty much academic.
One last thing to consider, as an aside. The role of the ASUN Bookstore is to serve the university community. It isn't a profit making enterprise, at least not in the traditional sense. The revenue the bookstore generates above and beyond the cost of doing business is reinvested at the University, through scholarships and funding for campus improvements, as directed by ASUN. There used to be a profit sharing agreement with the Graduate Student Association, but it lapsed without being renewed. (Interesting question: any bets as to whether GSA is still getting its cut even though the profit sharing agreement lapsed more than a year ago?)
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On the last point: Exactly, it's not in the traditional sense. But it is still relied upon to generate money for the university and its operations (on the ASUN level at least). Why is everything overpriced? It's to generate the money needed for the ASUN of course.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, if the state and university itself actually put money into the system instead of cutting it, we wouldn't be in this predictament in the first place.
My theory is this: The more a university relies upon money-generating measures (merchandise, athletics, fees), the more weak it becomes.
My two cents at least. Then again, most Public universities are like that.
Hey dipshit, that's called CAPITALISM. The more a University is independent and can be self sustaining the MORE stable it becomes. It's a pretty simply concept. If they have to rely on the Board of Regents or the Legislature, they are often caught in a political back and forth which usually (in Nevada because we don't respect education) ends up us getting cut. If you were actually intelligent, instead of some creepy wannabe troll, maybe you'd realize the only thing wrong with this situation is Brandon Bishop thinks he's the Speaker.
ReplyDeleteLupus, great post. I know the relationship between ASUN and the Bookstore has traditionally been a very separate one, but I'm actually glad that they* did something about this. It shows that Prez. Reilly sees how the bookstore getting bad PR leads to ASUN getting bad PR.
I'm not sure this has anything to do with Reilly OR the Senate...
ReplyDeleteAs I understood the statement, the manager cancelled the orders herself because something came to light.
anyways, bishop, you may want to calm down a bit...
Tell me when you stop shining Reilly's shoes.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism can work, but seriously, as I said, our reliance solely on money-generating measures instead of state funding as well got us here in the first place.
No, once again you lack not only intelligence but historical knowledge Eric (aka Dipshit). Our reliance on state funding is what got us into these budget cuts. Most large state Universities run mainly off of research, patents, and fees. For a state University to become successful, they usually have to limit the amount of funding they actually get from the state. In general, large state Universities (which are different than private ones) such as the University of Colorado, University of California, Berkeley, UC Davis, Oregon State, Texas A&M, etc... Get less than half of their funding from the state, compared to the University of Nevada, which gets 80%. If a University is dependent on appropriations, it can limit the long term planning of the institution. Why plan for a huge program when the funding might get cut next year?
ReplyDeleteDo you even think before you comment? These are pretty simple concepts and your taking the opposite side of reason, which I guess in your case is stupidity. If you don't actually have KNOWLEDGE and instead are just bullshitting, do us all a favor and keep your fingers in your pockets.
To 9:52 anny, You do have a point that it was the Bookstore manager who really did most of this, but instead of just sitting back, the student leaders decided to jump on the bandwagon. To me, it says something, it says that they care about where they get their money from and that they do see it as THEIR bookstore.
Hey eric, welcome to Nevada System of Higher Education. But that isnt the point Eric. The point of this post is analyzing what happened with the bookstore and what happened with Mr Bishop.
ReplyDeleteTo the anons at 9:52 and 10:17:
ReplyDeleteThe statement that was issued tells a different story than you say. What started all of this, according to the statement, "these concerns have originated from the students of the University." This led to the University's administration to ask ASUN to issue a recommendation to University President Glick regarding the University's continued business with Russell.
Further, the only time Marie Stewart is even mentioned, it is in a sentence that discusses how she was following orders: "Furthermore, Marie Stewart the Manager of the Associated Student Bookstore has been instructed by the Association to search for a new supplier." In fact, the statement says nothing of the Bookstore or its management initiating any actions whatsoever; it was the Association that directed, instructed, or whatever verb you want to use telling them to do something.