What's a dollar to you? A soda... a Jumbo Jack... a 20-minute call? While it's not a whole lot, no one would just throw a dollar away. But what if a person took a dollar from your pocket? Would you call that person a thief?
Every semester a dollar is taken from you. On your tuition bill is a strange, yet forgettable $1 charge. But when taken from every student attending Arizona's three public universities, what begins as a petty annoyance becomes highway robbery.
The Arizona Students Association collects $1 from each student every semester. While the average student may not notice the $2 missing each year, ASA certainly notices the new influx of over $200,000. Without lifting a finger, this defunct organization receives a huge budget on the backs of the students.
ASA is supposed to serve the students as the primary lobbying organization on behalf of student interests, but it has a deplorable record. Year after year it proposed asinine solutions to the Arizona Board of Regents, suggesting no tuition increase at all in the past.
Regents, tired of working with a group that won't even make concessions for inflation, is now proposing a 44 percent hike. ASA's reaction? It supports the increase! After years of staunch opposition to steady increments, it chooses this devastating increase to jump on board with.
Surely, with a cushy budget that allows for a full staff, a well-paid executive director and a comfortable downtown Phoenix office, ASA must have more success stories.
Wrong. Its list of victories is sadly bare and misleading. Its crown jewel was getting the student regent a vote on the Regents board, which really does nothing that the voice of a student wasn't already accomplishing.
If ASA isn't really spending much time successfully lobbying, what is it doing? For one, it is holding a leadership conference down at the state Legislature on Feb. 25 - a school day. Our hard-earned $2 is funding free lunch for the hundred participants (i.e., student government politicos) and the two guest speakers.
Who are these grand guest speakers? The esteemed Kelly and Danny of MTV's "Real World: New Orleans" are speaking on student "empowerment" (for a fee of approximately $6,000). You may remember these reality TV stars from various hot tub scenes, or perhaps the drunken mud wrestling during Mardi Gras.
Another chunk of change is dropped to fund ASA's annual trek to Washington to "lobby" for Arizona students. Our representatives have a grand time as they descend on D.C. with their nationwide counterparts, as they give the rest of us stuck here in the state a little nudge and wink about their vacation.
ASA also forks over thousands to be a member of the United States Student Association, a leftist group. The USSA describes itself as "a broad-based progressive advocacy group in the '80s and '90s." Progressive advocacy means "far-left" in politico tongue.
But what can you do when the group is funded, unchecked and run without fiscal responsibility or real student oversight? Actually, your dollar is refundable. Anyone can demand it back by visiting the ASASU offices on the third floor of the MU. Plus, ASA will have to pay for postage! ASU students, as the largest contributors to the budget, can outright bankrupt ASA and put it out of its misery altogether.
Let's send the message that we won't support the ASA joke any longer. It's time we demanded accountability and end this fleecing of students.
Shanna Bowman is an industrial engineering senior. Reach her at snb@asu.edu.
