Student Senate is poised to spend up to $4,000 of student money printing customized folders to be placed on tables around the school containing the contact information of Senate members and local representatives, as well as a list of upcoming advocacy events.
The folders will also contain a school map.
ASB Student Senate Vice President Leslie Milan Fisher said that $4,000 “seems like a large amount for printing costs.”
“I’m not sure if up to $4,000 is too much or if it’s not,” Director of Public Relations Cameron Weaver said.
Tamara Dunning, who is acting as ASB student senate president, said that demanding that amount of student money makes sense considering that the folders will be handed out for free.
“We have students that we are going to be providing something free to,” she said. “The idea here is to reach as many students as possible.”
Director of Legislative Affairs Kenneth Hinton spoke in favor of the bill, encouraging students to write their representatives to advocate for student issues in advance of Lobby Day at the State Capitol in February.
Hinton seemed confused as to the fact that the U.S. Congress meets in Washington D.C. while the California State Legislature meets at the State Capitol downtown.
“I think it’s extremely well that we’re planning this ahead of time,” he said. “Students can write their Congress from home.”
The Senate is also considering a bill that would spend $2,000 of student money reimbursing members for the costs of events they attend, some of which are in the Sacramento area.
Events listed in the bill include shared governance committees, Board of Trustee meetings and region meetings and trainings.
“If the individual wants to attend in person, travel reimbursement will be approved in the Center for Leadership and Development,” said Dunning.
ASB Student Senate Vice President Leslie Milan Fisher said that she thinks spending student money to attend meetings that are not mandatory “puts us on a slippery slope.”
“We aren’t required to be at Board of Trustee meetings,” she said.
Jorge Riley, who was elected ASB student senate president by a margin of 62 votes, but whose election was invalidated for reasons the administration and the ASB have not disclosed, says that the bill being debated is “reckless.”
“I don’t know why people need to be reimbursed to travel to Sacramento,” he said. “It is taking money that is spent to make sure there is a plan in place so people can phone in and ignoring it. I want to refer back to the March in March when they spent an egregious amount. One of the students said that that’s what this reminded him of.”
Next week, American River Review literary magazine adviser Michael Spurgeon will speak to the Senate in favor of a bill that would give an amount not to exceed $500 to the Review.
Jasmine • Nov 19, 2014 at 4:00 pm
With all of the money this group of students has authority over, why is it that issues like summer transit passes (when RT charges $100 per month), low graduation and transfer rates (27% and 13%, respectively, according to the National Center for Education Statistics), and the cardboard-tasting, sub-par food served in the Student Center continue to be ignored by the Senate?
This article reports $4,000 and $2,000 figures being considered to be allocated for paper with their names on them (plus some “advocacy events”) and “reimbursement” for attendance at “[non]mandatory” meetings. And does anyone remember when the Senate blew hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on passenger buses and Paratransit vehicles to an event which only requires a current student ID to get to at the State Capital, which is one mere block away from a light rail station?
Planning for campus morale-boosting Club Day events is good, but it would be great to focus on something other than the play aspect of life, by making an honest effort on delving into the work side of things—you [the Senate] say that you care about the needs of and strongly represent this student body? Prove it, and show that you care, by putting your minds together and figuring out how to effectively engage a student population in which less than one percent of said body actually votes come campus election time. That miniscule percentage demonstrates a lack of faith in you, to say the least.
I hope The Current reports auditing results soon concerning the Senate, because the civics lesson they seem to be imparting to the rest of us is that of just another perpetuation of the federal greed frequently seen in motion on C-Span.