ASM has done it again. No, it hasn't made great strides in its mission of ""maintaining and improving the quality of education and student life on campus,"" rather it has extrapolated yet another trivial drama to yet another branch of student government. And this time the Student Services Finance Committee is in the hot seat.
This year, almost every drama and debate surrounding ASM has to do with an internal issue that fails to positively affect the student body. This board fully supports making sure student government and SSFC is fair and follows proper procedures; however, when all ASM seems to do is tackle internal issues, the group seems pointless to the rest of the student body. A new proposal from the council epitomizes its misplaced priorities.
Last week, members of the council debated a piece of legislation that would create a separate oversight committee to review applications, legislation and documents from SSFC and the Student Judiciary before distribution. Sponsored by Reps. Tia Nowack, Tito Diaz and David Vines, the proposal would create a Process Standardization Committee to act as a check of power on ASM's additional branches of government. While it's true the checks and balances system is important to the success of any government, this board sees council's new legislation as a blatant power grab from SSFC and SJ.
As an autonomous body of ASM, SSFC staffs elected, trained and experienced members who are well versed in the finance committee's proper workings. Creating an additional oversight committee to review these workings not only threatens the legitimacy of SSFC's members, but overtly questions their competency. Because ASM is having trouble filling vacant leadership positions as it is, we believe an oversight committee will only hinder SSFC's functionality. This expansion of red tape is a slap to the face from a group who, more than likely, has just as much knowledge of SSFC's process requirements as the average student reading this paper.
That said, we don't believe SSFC should be granted total immunity from an oversight system. They should be subject to review just as any body of student government. Isn't that where SJ and the Rules Committee step in, anyway? It is those bodies' jobs to determine and reprove members when both the council and SSFC's dealings go awry. Implementing a process standardization committee to do the same thing on a more meticulous scale transfers this interpretive clout to council and completely undermines SJ's authority, begging us to ask: ""Who is checking up on the council?""
Right now, it seems that only former ASM leaders have taken on the ASM watchdog position. In an open letter to ASM from seven former members, including last year's chair Brandon Williams, former vice-chair Adam Johnson and former SSFC Chair Matt Manes, the group agrees the Process Standardization Committee, ""would place responsibility in the hands of often untrained council members […] it gives more authority to the body that has on countless occasions been gridlocked, bumbling and overall ineffective.""
To describe this year's ASM as ""ineffective"" is almost too polite. Not only does this new legislation prove that ASM is struggling to maintain order and efficiency within itself, it shows students that its members have their heads up their asses.
We would like to see ASM shift its focus on the initiatives it had planned for the year, like raising minimum wage standards for students on campus and mediating tenant-landlord issues, rather than watching its members bottle up their attention on internal affairs until they eventually explode. Unfortunately, this riff raff continues to dominate ASM's agenda and all we can do is watch and scoff at these low-brow actions and hope that some logic and rationale lifts ASM out of its primarily self-serving operations.
