Slash This, Slash That
BR flashbacks Streamlining the SA Constitution by Justin Somma October 1998
S
o I hear the SA Executive Board is “streamlining” the Student Association Constitution. I feel so sorry for the students, I really do. In my quest to rid the world of evil, this will be a major setback. You see, the Executive Boa.... Wait. When I was a freshman, I remember trying to read all the “inside” news that Pipe Dream and Binghamton Review printed, wondering the whole time who the hell all those people were, and what the hell all those “associations” and “coalitions” did. I feel bad now because I am forced to write “inside” news, so I will do my best to translate from “S.A. Speak” into common English, because if the world were run my way, we’d never have any associations or coalitions to care about. So in the following paragraphs, I will follow up each unknown term with a translation as to their function. To continue... The Executive Board (the high lords and rulers) of the Student Association (The Five Guys in a Mysterious Dark Room Association) has decided to streamline the SA Constitution (an unworkable document filled with bureaucratic nominalizations) and make it better (pure evil). In order to do this, they will make the changes during the summer (time when Executive Boards are free to do anything they want). When
the Student Assembly (50 Students who gather in a room to hear themselves speak) meets, they will attempt to ratify the Constitution and send it to the general population for vote (what we do on our way to the dining hall that we have no interest in really doing). If the vote passes, then the new Constitution becomes the law. If the Executive Board’s Constitution becomes law, then, for all you “Hellraiser” fans, the puzzle box is pretty much open and it’s time for Pinhead to step into our dimension. So instead of going along with the Executive Board’s changes, I decided to make a few suggestions of my own that would do nothing but make students happy. Here’s how... Vouchers, Vouchers Everywhere. Since the dawn of time, a voucher was used whenever the government wanted the citizens to choose something for themselves. Be the voucher a school voucher that allowed citizens to choose their children’s schools or a tax voucher that allowed citizens to allocate their taxed funds. In my Constitution, there would be a voucher for the Student Activity Fee (Money that we give along with tuition each year that mostly goes to fund radical political weirdos). The money in the Student Activity Fee totals over $50 per person per semester, or over $100 per person per year, and you are forced to
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give it to the SA without even a voice into where it goes. Pretty shitty, huh? Hmm... what else could we do with $100? We could buy 2 ½ kegs of Milwaukee’s Best. We could drive down to Mardi Gras and spend one night in a seedy hotel with two half-naked women and an 8-ball of cocaine. We could do a hell of a lot of fun things for $100. Unfortunately, if the Executive Board gets their way, we’ll never be able to do anything with that $100. So I say that we send it to the students. Let the students choose what groups their money goes to, if they want their money to go at all. We’d end the reign of 5 member groups that get $2000 from the SA. Membership and allocated funds would pretty much be two parallel lines on the chart - the way it should be. Unfortunately there is a great battle against this. The Executive Board is currently offering up a popularly elected Budget Committee (a collection of jugheads who decide how many trillions we should give to the “Save Farrakhan Foundation”). What they don’t realize is that no matter how much they advertise it in Pipe Dream, no students will ever vote for this. We have so little faith in government that we realize that it’s not even worth the effort to vote because the status quo of shitty funding will always be maintained. The only way to effect radical change is a voucher system. The only way to get your money put where you want it is a voucher system. All that and it is the easiest system for the Financial Vice President (money lady) to work with. Sure there is more to the system than just that. There are plenty of provisions to make sure that needed groups like Harpur’s Ferry get their allocation, but in order to save space, those issues will be addressed in a later issue of the Review. Self-Termination. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger said at the end of T2, “I cannot self-terminate.” That sentiment is
Binghamton Review, December 2008
No VPMA, No VPF, No Assembly... shared by the Executive Board. They simply cannot find it in their hearts to write a Constitution that would eliminate their roles (and their stipends). Well, because I am not one of them, I will help them along with the act. The Executive Board is chockfull of useless positions and responsibilities that are either totally extraneous, or that duplicate a necessary function performed by one of the two nice ladies paid by the Association to do those duties the first time. The first victim of my slashfest would be the Vice President for Multicultural Affairs (A Politically Correct mix of Oscar the Grouch and the demon that took over Linda Blair’s body in “The Exorcist”). The VPMA was a position created so that our university could look more “multicultural” (more full of shit than a McDonald’s hamburger). It does nothing but start fights, riots, and general misery that never ceases to inconvenience the fun of students that aren’t here to start a war. The SA was created to divide up $1,000,000 in student funds, and a position created to “make sure we do it fairly” tends to set off a few warning lights in the heads of us logical folk. To put it simply, having a VPMA oversee money allocations is like having a cannibal referee for a Mike Tyson fight. It just isn’t fair. The second man out would be the Executive Vice President (the SA’s answer to Mills Lane). He does two things, approves group Constitutions to keep them accountable to the SA, and runs the three-hour nightmare that is a Student Assembly meeting. First off, groups should not have individual Constitutions because under a voucher system, groups would only be accountable to the students that fund
them, and only if those students choose to worry about it. If a group wants to blow their money on a wild beer bash, let them - but it’s their loss because in the end their group begins to serve no purpose but beer bashes. Then let the President deal with them. It’ll give him a chance to use the cellular phone that we pay for. Secondly, there should be no Student Assembly. With a voucher system, there would be no budget to argue over, and therefore, no purpose for a centralized association. The only other function of the Assembly is to make “suggestions” to higher organizations that carry the same weight as a single student sending in a letter of complaint. If the second function of the Assembly wants to be served, let the community governments do it, the administration takes them more seriously anyway. Third goes the Financial Vice President. Currently, the FVP does little more than add an unnecessary step to the job of the Association’s paid accountant. With a voucher system the FVP would have even less to do, and needless to say the paid accountant’s job would be easier. I’d eliminate the FVP and raise the pay of the accountant to take on the five extra minutes of daily responsibility. That leaves three positions. The first is the Academic Vice President (useful position that sometimes adds to students’ academic lives). So long as this person is not permitted to advocate more requirements to burden incoming freshmen and transfer students with, everything should go fine. There are a few powers regarding the Harpur College Council (group of professors and students who occasionally do good but mostly argue over whether or not students should be forced to take ENG
39 114D: Skydiving Voodoo Multicultural Literature) that need to be removed, but for the most part the position is sound. The second position that I would keep would be the Vice President of University Programming (that concert girl). The VPUP is responsible for LL Cool J, Dave Matthews, Howie Mandel, and others coming to visit campus. Since there is no more pub there will be no more pub shows, but the VPUP can still plan smaller campus events all year long, if any position needs power, this is the one. The final position is the President (the only thing pipe dream has to write about during the year). A good figurehead to interact with the administration, and a good source of controversy (if the streak of the past few years holds true). That would be it. Three Executive Board positions, no voting power for any of them, no Assembly for them to control. Their weekly reports would be printed in The Student Advocate, a newspaper mentioned in the current Constitution that is supposedly a newsletter of the SA. Those two very simple changes would infinitely simplify the Constitution, considering that the Constitution revolves around rules governing SA meetings and E-Board rights and privileges. Unless the Executive Board proposes something along the lines of what I just wrote about, don’t buy into it. We don’t need another dark age of co-operatives and multiculturalism. All we need is a chance to have a kick-ass time here at Binghamton University. Just be warned that if we don’t fight them now, there will come a time when their Constitutional changes actually hit home, and we’ll be powerless to stop them.
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Binghamton Review, December 2008