Tuesday, October 27, 2009
JV 2017 Timeline
I'm going to address a couple of issues President Reilly may be taking license with.
1) “Even when the new student union was built, we didn’t bring that to a student vote,” [Reilly] said.
While true, the proposal for the Union went through two (maybe three) senates where it was a serious issue . There were several surveys over two years engaging several thousand students (sadly I was here to participate in some of those surveys). There were numerous advisory committees on nearly every issue conceivable involving students from across campus. I don't think anything like that has been done this time around.
2) The fee is urgent, Reilly said, because it will bring back tutoring services needed by students on campus and “keep (ASUN) relevant to students.”
Regardless of when the fee is approved (December 2009 or April 2010), if it is approved, it will not be implemented until Fall 2010. Perhaps President Reilly is concerned that the administration and ASUN will need more than three months to do the footwork necessary to implement the changes promised by the fee. I wouldn't be too concerned about the administration, but ASUN might have some problems transitioning over summer. But worry not, ASUN could write up the laws, proposals and ideas necessary to implement the transition before the fee is approved by students, and be prepared if the Regents approve the plan.
Might it be nice to be able to be sure where the fee stands by years end? Yes. Is it necessary? No.
There are few questions I think are a little more important to have answers to. It would be nice to have an understanding of where the student body stands on subsidizing tutoring (predominantly for math, science and engineering lower level classes). It would be nice to know where the student body stands on effectively doubling the budget of ASUN given the nearly 100% increase in fees the student government enjoyed over the past three years. It would be nice to know where the student body stands on creating a new department with a million dollar budget.
See the fee proposal here.
See the narrative proposal here.
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Some more time line fudging. On page 2 of Reilly's memo, he writes "On 13 August 2009, the working copy of Joint Vision was released to the ASUN senate (which speaks on behalf of the undergraduate population) for a period of several weeks to solicit any feedback and answer any concerns." I wonder how accurate that statement really is. The Senate never seems to have had the document at that time. Is it accurate, and the Senate just sat on it? Or is this fudged, too?
ReplyDeleteIt worries me that the ASUN President is being used, willfully or not, as a mouthpiece for the administration and is dragging ASUN as an institution into the plan without ever consulting the Senate first. There is no way this plan represents Eli's vision. He may have bought into it, but it's not entirely his vision.