Friday, January 26, 2007
Lucky them
Josh Daniels (GA President) and Joyce Liou (ASUC Academic Affairs Veep) have an op-ed today trying to sell us on "Lower Sproul Redevelopment." Lucky for them, it's not online, so pointing out the idiocy and deception become a bit tougher. Shall we go with the line-by-line?
For those of you who frequent the Lower Sproul Plaza on your way to class, to the RSF, to the Tang Center, or to any other destination, you already know that the space desperately needs to be redesigned to meet the current and future needs of student services, student activities, student government, and the businesses that serve students. Really? Does everyone who strolls by say "Hey, this won't work for future student government"? No, of course not. Josh and Joyce are just lying.
Simply put, it is a dark, dreary, and unpopular place. Are we talking about the same Lower Sproul? Dark?
If we do need a student referendum for the project to move forward, you can be sure that the financial impact of students would be minimized as much as possible. More accurately, the apparent impact will be minimized. Josh has already told us that his plan is to propose the fee increase in phases to make the enormous fee increase seem more palatable.
Both the ASUC and the Graduate Assembly will make sure that for any money students do decide to contribute, it will be students deciding how the money is used. No, it will be our student "leadership." One recent decision of that sort: Pay the personal legal bills of one Joyce Liou. And even if they weren't thieves, do we really trust them to be competent? Remember when the ASUC let folks literally walk away with boxes of student money?
Just as with last year's RSF referendum, students will help guide and oversee the planning of the project so that the results meet our needs and expectations. That's an odd comparison. The RSF referendum was pushed by the university, and the senators agreed to be good little monkeys and do as they were told by putting it on the ballot. The campaign came from the university, not students. The university saw that it could not conduct a financially viable operation without subsidies from students, and then called on the ASUC to "jump." The ASUC asked "How high?"
Josh Daniels, of course, was one of those supporters. He knows his way around a referendum, and successfully managed to achieve an astronomical 60% abstention rate on his beloved GA referendum by deliberately keeping the question vague enough that folks wouldn't know what they were voting on. (Hint: It was a handover of money and power to the GA for no reason) He then proceeded to absolutely fail to carry out the duties he demanded be given to him, leaving us with an Election Council Chair who was appointed eight weeks late. Why? Because he was too inattentive to realize what he was recruiting for, telling folks that he was recruiting for the Elections Council (requires work), rather than Elections Council Chair Selection Committee (rubber stamp). But a person who can demand power and then forget to carry out his responsibility is telling us to trust him to speak for us and take good care of our money. Great.
If nothing is done the Chancellor may soon decide - he is, after all, legally responsible for the safety of student students on the campus - to raise campus life safety fees unilaterally in order to alleviate the seismic concerns in some of the building in Lower Sproul. Not only will this increase our fee burden, we will have absolutely no say in how the complex is developed. And here is this year's "Jump/How high?" moment. See, the reason the ASUC wants to increase fees is because the university told them to, using this as an excuse. The reason here is that raising fees is bad PR for the university. So they say "Hey, ASUC, raise the fees for us!" What does the ASUC say? "Sure!!!" Even if the university had to act unilaterally, it would still pretend to ask for student input, again because of PR reasons.
Tools are in good supply around the ASUC.
. . .
|
. . .
|
