Friday, April 06, 2007
Hmm...
I dunno if I like my piece's title.
Let's take a look at the committments that Josh Daniels and Oren Gabriel brag about in their op-ed:
The administration has stepped up to the plate as well. The chair of the redevelopment oversight committee has requested $4.1 million of administration funds over four years! Well, hey, a chair requested money! That's real progress! Did that money get approved? The suspense is killing me... tell us. Tell us! And does this request have any connection to the fee increase? Is there any binding tie between the two?
In addition, the chancellor has said that the redevelopment will be on the list of campus fundraising priorities. Yay! We're on a list of priorities! Man, with concrete progress like this, it's a wonder the place hasn't been redeveloped already!
Perhaps the most important aspect of this referendum, however, is that it gives us, the students, true power over the process and composition of the redevelopment. The power to give in?
Just for fun, let's start quoting from some minutes on the topic.
Mr. Daniels said that one section of the Referendum, the third bullet point, talked about paying for a principle gift officer, who would fundraise for the construction of this redevelopment, which would eventually reduce the amounts students would be asked to pay for construction. Mr. Daniels he was just told that day the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs will not guarantee that it will contribute the rest. The University didn't even want to pay for a principal gift officer to help fundraise for this complex. Hmmm...
Mr. Nguyen asked if there was any guaranteed offer by the University to pay for their side of the costs of the conceptual plan. Mr. Daniels said the University wouldn't commit anything because costs weren't known for sure, and they haven't seen the students willing to commit. If this fee passed and students felt this was a good direction in which to go, the next step was for Officers, the Committee, and the working group, to go to the Chancellor and say students made a major commitment and that they needed the campus to make a commitment to finish design, up to construction. So... first we give them the money. Then we try to convince them that we bought something.
Mr. Daniels said there were no guarantees, and a private corporation could invest half a billion dollars to do something else. But they had to trust that this redevelopment was in the University's and the Administration's interest to proceed. Ah, the "trust them" approach to negotiations with the University. How long ago were we supposed to have a multicultural center, by the way?
The next week, in discussions for how to change that fee bill:
In his conversations with UCOP, they made it clear that they would prefer to have it a particular way out of their concern for whatever interests they represent. But students on campus felt comfortable with the version that was passed by the Senate last week. It was clear and conveyed to the students what was necessary. However, that said, the ASUC was always in the mood to compromise if that made more people happy with how things were going. Oh. Always in the mood to compromise to make people happy. But somehow, we are supposed to have faith that these folks will stand up and vote to end this fee if the university tries to screw us over.
Mr. Daniels said that one worry of UCOP was concern that "partnership," which was one of the terms used in the opening paragraph, was a legal term. He was tempted to debate that, as an aspiring lawyer, but he figured they should just compromise and find a term that worked with everyone. So they came up with another term, "collaboration." So in all but one place, they changed the term "partnership" with "collaboration." Let's presuppose that "partnership" is, in fact, a legal term. Why do we want to make sure that we don't use legal terms? Wouldn't legal terms make it harder for the University to screw us over? Yes, and the University knows this, apparently.
Mr. Wasserman asked if he was amenable to an amendment with regard to adding language to the effect that there was no guarantee the University would do anything with the students' money, just so voters knew there was a risk involved with increasing their student fees for this. Mr. Daniels said he would hope students would see that when they'd read about the guarantees that were put in place, with the Senate and the GA having the option to revoke the fee. His other concern was that the effect of that sort of language would skew things in the opposite direction. So... telling the truth would skew the things away from the fee... so we shouldn't?
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