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Opinion & Editorial
Students Must Stay Informed About SUA Decisions
Students must closely monitor the spending of their representatives
By City on a Hill Press
City on a Hill Press
Published November 17, 2011 at 1:33 am

Illustration by Christine Hipp

Editor’s Note

Due to numerous concerns raised about statements made in this editorial, the City on a Hill Press editorial board is reviewing and amending the piece. We have chosen to leave the current version posted, so our readers can continue discussion in the comments section. If you have specific comments or concerns, we welcome feedback and would appreciate the help. Contact us about this editorial at letters@cityonahillpress.com or editors@cityonahillpress.com

Corrections

This article was updated on Nov. 26 to reflect several changes. The UCSC SUA was approached by the UAW to help organize student transportation to the Nov. 16 UC Board of Regents meeting, and did not fail to uphold a commitment to provide their own buses, as was previously reported.

UC Santa Cruz’s Student Union Assembly (SUA) has made strides in representing students on campus in the University of California Student Association and the United States Student Association. While City on a Hill Press applauds the efforts of SUA members, many of whom struggle in their positions with problems inherited from those who previously held their positions, it is important to pay attention to the actions of the representatives and ensure student money is being used responsibly and effectively.

Third-year Justin Riordan serves as Kresge parliamentarian, and on Oct. 31 submitted a report on the operations of the SUA. Riordan has found areas that seem like appropriate places for budget cuts.

In a letter to City on a Hill Press, Riordan said he presented an alternative budget to the SUA that had no cuts from conferences, save the Grassroots Legislative Conference (LegCon) in DC, and instead made up the cuts in Officer Programing.

“I did and do advocate for cutting from LegCon because of the expense per student required of this particular conference. Which was correctly identified as about $1000 per student,” he said. “These conferences are one of the direct and tangible things the SUA does for the Student Body and I encourage all student to apply to them, as they are open to all students and not just members of the SUA, [and] as they are amazing opportunities.”

Another aspect of the budget that has received much attention from the campus community has been the $5,000 used to purchase “B” parking permits for officers. Sources note there has been considerable opposition to ending the purchasing of the permits for officers, which are not guaranteed as compensation in the SUA’s documentation.

Without explanation, this kind of spending can be interpreted as a sign the representatives hold themselves above the students they represent. When the majority of UCSC students utilize campus and Metro buses to get around campus, such a large sum being spent on these permits seems unnecessary.

However, whether or not students agree with these decisions, it is important to stay informed — students should ask questions about where their money is being spent, and know the reasons purchases are made. It is important to note that the campus community must charge themselves with closely monitoring SUA representatives’ spending, and take action against projects they do not feel are in the best interest of the student body. In the current uncertain climate of the UC, it is more important now than ever that all students are communicating and working together to protect their right to their education.

Comments
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  • Yupyup

    Wow…maybe whoever wrote this piece should attend sua meetings and “monitor their represenatives spending” before they start advising others to do the same. Maybe then they would have a different opinion. But honestly everyone should be attending SUA meetings and not rely on bias opinion articles like this one to inform them about what’s happening.

    • annoyed

      People don’t attend SUA because it’s boring and meetings drag on
      forever. I know. I’ve been to SUA meetings. It’s unrealistic to assume
      that students will actually attend meetings to monitor spending. And to frank, they shouldn’t have to. We elect these the officers to manage our funds. We send reps from the colleges to make sure that SUA represents the students best interests. When those who have been given power mismanage it and lead to the loss of $60,000… I think they’re turning into the regents that they hate so much.

    • annoyed also

      The body as a whole should hold itself accountable. I’ve been a rep in the past and its not only the officers who motion to spend this money. Reps make motions also to spend the money on a variety of things and I have have witness these decisions be made. People either speak up or dont. The SUA spends this money, as in, the officers, the college representatives, and the organization reps as a body of students who represent the entire student body. If we’re targeting the officers, we should also begin to question the elected representatives that our college senates appoint and the at large org reps.

    • shocked

      Thank you for making that point. Budgetary fundings are voted on by the entire body. The body is made up of the six elected officers, three representatives from each college and one representative from the six ethnic organizations. The current six officers are not personally responsible for last years budgetary spending. The entire body needs to be held accountable for their actions and not use the officers as their scapegoat. As such, the officers are individuals and do not vote as a cohesive unit. The current officers were elected from two separate tickets and while they work together on student issues, it is unfair to lump them as one adversary body. The current focus of the Chair for this quarter has been restructuring SUA to make sure that this budgetary problem does not occur again. Justin touched on the restructuring in his argument, but he did not elaborate on it because it would void the point of his argument. The problems of last year have been addressed and steps to rectify them are being taken. 

      As far as individual students, yes SUA meetings can be long and boring, but each officer has office hours and will make additional appointments to meet with any student that is interested in meeting with them. If you have an opinion, concern or comment to make and dont want to sit through a long drawn out meeting, then meet with the officers and make your voice heard. 

    • Justin Riordan

      We will have to agree to disagree that there have been structural changes to address the budget issues. To elaborate on that point, a Treasurer has been appointed, but this is a constitutional requirement and not a change to the operations of the SUA. As for steps to rectifying the budget issues are taking place, I would like to see this actually happen (maybe through structural change of the SUA financial bylaws?).

      I would also be careful in the selection bias of this op-ed, as they selected quotes of my report and failed to provide all of the complexities that I did address. I addition, at the time of filing my report there was still no completed actions of the SUA on the budget or Treasurer.

    • Befuddled

      I would like to point out that the only office hours posted on the SUA website (http://studentunionassembly.org/) are that of the Commissioner of Diversity. The posted hours are: “12-1pm.”

    • Then Ask.

      Then contact the officers. They have all their contact information there.

  • Stop Writing BS

    Wow city on a hill press sure has gone down hill – the writing and reporting in this opinion piece largely skews and twists the facts of the SUA budget to what that Kresge “parliamentarian” idiot Justin Riordan perceives. 
    Kresge Parliament, for one thing, is the epitome of student government corruption. They have a very skewed vision of student service – you can see this through Justin Riordan’s proud announcement of their “Sock a Homeless Person” drive. Kresge Parliament representatives to SUA have shown a past of serious ineptitude in any sort of representation – People like Will Estell, the other past Kresge representative to SUA, in response to the question of what SUA is during a SUA meeting, proudly said “I don’t care” with a smile on his face, while other representatives proudly affirms SUA’s history of services to students and advocacy of students to administration, local, state and federal government. The third Kresge representative, Doug Baker, has been seen doing homework in Kresge Parliament meetings, jokingly abstaining to every single vote, and never reporting a single word about what happens in SUA meetings. Doug Baker has also proudly state how he is of a “hard science” major – how having such a major gives him superiority in terms of his study to the other social science majors in the SUA representative makeup. With that said, its been apparent that Doug Baker has shown to be an apathetic claim to the name “SUA Representative,” showing very little involvement in any facet of SUA – claiming major commitments in his major and particularly StarCraft 2 on weekends. If the City on the Hill Press takes the reporting of corruption in student government seriously – they would actually find all the facts, find testimony, and find that conferences funded by SUA have actually served to benefit and empower a broad base of students. The Press should be taken as a seriously profession – not some sort of child’s play and gossip game.

    • Justin Riordan

      You are obviously very upset with myself and the other Kresge Representative, and while you have the right to be so, I wish you would have the courage to address these issues with me instead of posting an attack on the CHP website. 

      I would like to point out however that a few of your comments directed at me are distorted by the fact that this is a op-ed piece where the author(s) took the initiative to adjust my report slightly.

      I agree with you that conferences do serve the student body well, and you will remember (from your post I assume you are a SUA member or have attended the meetings) that I presented an alternative budget that cut nothing from any conference, save LegCon. My major issue with LegCon is the $1000 per student price tag and that we usually bring a delegation much larger that the average of the other delegation. (ie the 26 of last year to the average of about 16 or so). 

      As one of the portions of my report, that was omitted in this op-ed, stated, the SUA is doing great work for the student body and lots of good changes have happened in the first month. We just have to be sure that we are putting our money in the most effective places and work together as the whole SUA (and not trying to make motions to approve the budget within a few seconds of it being presented just to shut out my opposition).

    • Jeng

      Hi Justin, as an editor for City on a Hill Press, I am concerned about your comments that this editorial misrepresented your report — while this is an opinion piece, and consequently obviously has bias, we do not want to present incorrect information or incorrectly portray our sources. I would like to add to our online version the additional information you feel has been unfairly omitted, and correct any errors in the piece. If you are willing to help us out with that, please email us at editors@cityonahillpress.com. Thank you for taking the time to comment on the piece, and I apologize for any errors we may have made in writing this editorial.

  • Erik Green

    Letter to the Editor:
    While I greatly support holding Student Governments accountable, as was stated in the 11/17 Editorial “SUA Mismanaged Funds”, I wanted to address a gross inaccuracy within that editorial.

    The ReFund California campaign is a statewide coalition of many organizations, including a number of Unions.  A statewide Day of Action on November 16 was organized by this full coalition, which includes both UCSA as well as UAW 2865, the UC TA Union.  The UAW had already chartered multiple busses for this event before engaging the UCSC Student Governments, asking for our support in filling the busses with people, not with funding them.  The sentiment that TAs “picked up the slack” from the SUA is flat out incorrect. The editors should be applauding the SUA for not spending money on something that was already funded, and instead working with the ReFund California campaign on filling the spots on the already-chartered busses.

    While I greatly appreciate the recognition of the work of TAs on campus and in campus organizing, pitting the Union against the SUA is not a worthwhile or effective strategy for either of our organizations, and I think the Editorial Board should be ashamed for engaging in such tactics.

    –
    ~Erik Green
    President, UCSC Graduate Student Association, and Member, UAW Local 2865
    An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

    • Jeng

      Hello Erik,

      Thank you for bringing this error to our attention. We in no way intended to pit the UAW against the SUA, or to provide incorrect information to our readers. I believe our writer was basing the specific comment you refer to off of a previous interview with SUA external vice chair Nelson Cortez, who told a reporter on Nov. 3 that SUA was looking into arranging transportation (http://www.cityonahillpress.com/2011/11/03/sua-works-on-transportation-arrangements-for-upcoming-regents-meeting/). However, that information may have been unintentionally misrepresented in this editorial, which I agree is not acceptable. We have removed the lines you pointed to as incorrect, and posted a correction at the top of the page. We will publish a correction in our next print issue, and would be happy to publish your letter as well. Please let us know if you would like your comment published as a Letter to the Editor in our next print issue, or if there are any further corrections you think need to be made. Again, thank you for commenting and clarifying this point — it is never our intention to provide our readership with misinformation, and we appreciate your help in making sure this doesn’t happen.

      -Julie Eng
      Co-Editor-in-Chief
      City on a Hill Press

  • disappointed

    i am extremely disappointed in CHP. this article is flooded with incorrect information! also, i agree with Erik. pitting the SUA against the UAW union was a very immature thing to do. i don’t see what purpose it served. CHP did a disservice by writing this extremely biased article and misinforming students. 

    • Jeng

      Hello Disappointed, we appreciate your readership and feedback, and as I addressed in my reply to Erik’s comment, there was absolutely no intention of pitting the SUA against the UAW. The error was an honest mistake, and I appreciate your understanding that as we are fundamentally a teaching paper, our writers are learning and do make mistakes — while we strive to always present information accurately, unfortunately errors are occasionally made, and we do our best to correct them as quickly as possible. To that end, if you have any specific information you believe we reported inaccurately, we’d be more than happy to correct the editorial.

      I’d like to point out that as this piece was published in our Opinions & Editorial section and is an editorial piece, it is not a  news article, and is intended to present the opinion of the writer. That being said, there is no excuse for misinforming students, and we would like to correct this error. Please comment with your corrections, or email us at editors [at] cityonahillpress.com

      -Julie Eng
       Co-Editor-in-Chief
       City on a Hill Press

  • Kevin Huang

    With all due respect to the work that CHP has contributed to the progression of this campus in the past, I am very disappointed that this editorial was even published. As a representative to SUA, I find the direct attacks on the officers and the representatives to be based on very shaky grounds with little factual evidence.

    Fundamentally, my criticisms firstly stem on the integrity of this piece as an editorial piece – if you are truly trying to make a solid argument, please use factual evidence to support those contentions rather than relying on hearsay like many tabloids do.

    As much conviction Justin may have in his statements, the writer of this article could have used evidence that is publicly available already – the budget is accessible online, so are the minutes. The officers have office hours, you could have asked about the selection of students for conference rather than simply relying on a blanket statement from one person. 

    Conferences are much more inclusive than stated, in fact, last year officers even spent their own money to fund their own transportation in order to increase the number of people that could attend to the particular Conference in DC – which by the way was NOT exclusively SUA “members.”(BTW because of the officers responsible financial assessment last year, the number of attendance to that conference was much higher just 19 stated there). 80 students from UCSC can even attest to their attendance to a recent “Student of Color Conference” at UC Davis recently – the vast majority of those attendees were NOT SUA representatives as well.

    As the Campus Organizing Director (not an officer) who works closely under Nelson Cortez’s office, the External Vice Chair ( who is an officer), I will say that those parking permits that are integral to the work that the officers do – they are essential to the effectiveness of the officers’ tasks in REPRESENTING and SERVING the students. They are VITAL to our officers on a campus that is so spread out and seemingly planned to even discourage student organizing due to distance. Frankly, Justin can claim that he was met with “backlash” and “threatening” remarks – but there was NO such thing during the meeting – the minutes will show that this discussion was actually met with many college REPRESENTATIVES defending the officer’s use of the permits, rather than the officers simply defending their “self-service” that this editorial so much claims. 
    There are many more inaccurate blanket statements made by this editorial.The attempts by the officers to greatly increase the effectiveness in the budget should be applauded. The efforts of the officers in their individual office campaigns FOR STUDENTS should be noted as well – of course there has been no coverage of that.  Even Victor Velasco, the Internal Vice Chair, was even featured on the front page cover on CHP’s coverage of the Nov. 9 action – “A Changing UC”, a photograph of Victor with his fist up in the air when he spoke at the rally at Quarry Plaza on campus for Occupy Education.Of course, NONE OF THIS HAS BEEN acknowledged of the SUA Officer group – rather they are simply attacked for a piece of the story that relies on the action of SUA Representatives with the spin of the words of a particular representative that simply wanted to cut more. The editorial board should seriously adopt a much more comprehensive and detailed view of the situation rather than jumping in head first with an argument based on simple hearsay.

    It’s rather unsettling to see the amount of conviction that is put into this editorial – and how deep a feeling of resentment towards student advocacy is felt in this piece. 

    And if this is truly the position of CHP on SUA, throwing aside all aspects of student advocacy that the SUA represents to the Regents, local, state, and federal entities – and given the current climate with administration and police brutally beating down on students – its very disappointing to see our own STUDENT Press to attack STUDENT advocates on such inaccurate grounds.

    Kevin Huang
    President , College Ten Student Senate
    Campus Organizing Director & College Ten Representative, Student Union Assembly