In America, there are certain things we are supposed to unilaterally love: hard-hitting football, television shows involving crime scenes, either great tasting and/or less filling beer, dollar menus, funniest home videos, celebrities who have no right being celebrities.
Above all else, though, we love empowerment, which, in turn, gives us reason to idolize President Abraham Lincoln. During his famed speech, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln defended the ideal of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” a notion that has reverberated in American rhetoric ever since it was delivered at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa., on Nov. 19, 1863.
This constituent-based governance has already followed us everywhere — from grade-school student councils to homeowners associations.
Now — finally — we feel as though some student government leaders at this University have begun taking notice, as well. But not the ones you might have thought.
In stark contrast to Undergraduate Student Government, their publicity-hoarding bigger neighbors on the Tempe campus who drew our ire earlier in the semester with a perceived misappropriation of student funds, we have been greatly impressed by the smaller, yet no less mighty, Associated Students of ASU West.
When the Arizona Board of Regents approved the student initiatives fee last year that began tacking on an additional $50 per year to our ASU bill starting this semester, we felt strongly that if the student body had to pay up then the student body might as well reap the benefits and have a say over its money.
And it looked good for a while, as USG and its Polytechnic campus equivalent, Associated Students of ASU Polytechnic, decided to dole out surveys to students on where they wanted the money designated.
But then the process seemingly turned a little hush-hush. Student government leaders acted on the surveys (taken by whom, we still don’t know; we sure weren’t asked) and designated the money from the student fee on their own from there. That process yielded such things as a $70,000 check to The New York Times and a $202,000 check to Arizona Public Interest Research Group, a student lobbyist organization.
Meanwhile, the leaders out West had it right the whole time, adhering to Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people.” They set up a nine-member committee — better yet, one that has no more than half of its voting members coming from student government — that handles requests directly from students in need of the funds. This model represents a better form of direct representation.
Student money is at issue here; therefore, the process should ultimately reflect the voices of any students who wish to be actively involved in the process.
Or, as Ryan Caracciolo, president of ASASUW, said, “The money that comes from this fee is the students’ money.”
That mindset, to us, represents the original purpose of the fee. And by following that, ASASUW has the right idea.
