Thursday, October 29, 2009
Proper Process
In a recent post, I asked the following in a rhetorical manner:
"Can the President of the Association present to the Board of Regents on behalf of ASUN, a proposal to add a $10 fee for a writing center and on-campus performing arts without any apparent authority granted by the senate (see the Sagebrush report)?"
President Reilly admitted he did as much last night during an ASUN committee meeting.
This is a slap in the face to pretty much every student and senator on campus. The senate is doing a good job enforcing it's prerogative despite the president's insistence that this be reviewed quickly, and his apparent presumption.
I hope the senate will do its due diligence on this one. Speaker Geremia should (too late for next week) direct more than one committee to look at the bill. Each committee should do its best to engage students. Academics should be looking at the proposal for the tutoring fee. Campus Community and/or University Affairs could be looking at the fine arts fee. Budget and Finance could be analyzing President Reilly's figures to try and understand why what today costs $1.6 million will next year cost $1.8 million. Public Affairs has an obvious role in analyzing any fee increase.
The committees should also get administrators from student services to opine, in public, on the creation of a new, expensive and fairly large department.
Why is Director Rodriguez not being up front with her opinion? Where do Doctors Marczynski and Ellis stand on this question?
There are so many questions that need to be asked for the students to be able to analyze this proposal in its entirety.
Do not allow a false timeline to goad you into making a hasty decision. This proposal does have the potential to help our campus maintain many services students seem to want (e.g., free/subsidized tutoring, the math and writing centers). It also has the potential to double expenditures on programming and open new opportunities for campus publication and dialogue. But in no way does the handful of people one man spoke to constitute grounds for implementing this proposal.
Take your time, take a month if you need to. If this really does have the potential to change the face of this campus as President Reilly claims, whether it is implemented in 2010 or 2011 is of secondary concern.
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