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| Are The Senators Really Doing Their Jobs? | ||||||
| The Associated Students Senate failed at its most important job in an emergency held yesterday: serving the students. | ||||||
| The Daily Forty-Niner, in the culmination of a fiscal crisis that eventually spells the end of the newspaper, appealed to the Senate in an attempt to place a referendum on the ballot of the upcoming ASI elections. The referendum would have allowed students to vote on a seven-dollar fee increase to allocated much-needed funds to the Daily Forty-Niner and the Senate voted against it. | ||||||
| Besides the fact that the Daily Forty-Niner was bullied into including the Long Beach Union, K-BEACH and the Goldmine Yearbook (three campus media outlets that already receive funds through ASI) in the referendum, there are several disheartening issues that deserve to be brought to the surface. | ||||||
| The Daily Forty-Niner originally proposed the referendum to benefit itself and Dig Magazine, but the Senate's own vice-president, Erik Jolliff, advised against that because he believed that it wouldn't pass without including the rest of the student media. The Long Beach Union, K-BEACH and the Goldmine Yearbook already receive approximately $140,000 a year through ASI; Daily Forty-Niner receives nothing. Why, then, was the Daily Forty-Niner forced to include the three AS-funded media in its own referendum, groups that already receive adequate funding and are in no danger of going under? | ||||||
| It is also important to recognize the fact that several senators are clearly not doing their job. The senators are elected by the student body to fulfill a purpose: to act in the interests of all students and allow them to have a say in what goes on. Monday's emergency Senate meeting was proof-positive that this is not really the way it works. The Daily Forty-Niner invited the senators to come to the newspaper's editorial offices last weekend to work out the specifics of the referendum, tweak numbers and come to a mutually agreeable conclusion. Out of 21 senators, however, only four showed up. | ||||||
| This simple fact contributed to the three-hour long circular argument that ensued in the Senate chambers on Monday. Had the majority of senators done their job and served their campus by attending the meeting held by the Daily Forty-Niner for the purpose of expediting the process, perhaps the filibustering that occurred would have been quashed before it even started. | ||||||
| This begs a question: when a student-elected Senate doesn't even take the time to get the facts straight and instead disregards the meeting completely, entering the Senate chambers and deciding on an issue on-the-spot that deserved lengthy prior deliberation, it is very disheartening. | ||||||
| Senator Morgan Wheeler, who clearly saw the plight of the Daily Forty-Niner and took the time to attend the meeting he, as a senator, was invited to, deserves acclimation. Wheeler, who often voices his opinion on issues in the Senate chambers, is frequently met with rolling eyes and sighs from not only gallery members but senators as well. Did the students, who, keep in mind, elected and hired the senators to serve them, really grant them positions of power so they could roll their eyes and brush off another senator as a nuisance? Is the Senate's job to carefully consider everything and to give each senator the respect and time they deserve while deliberating various issues, or did the students elect them to give them a good resume builder? | ||||||
| Senator Hironao Okahana, who voted no on the referendum, also deserves acclimation, but for a different reason. The simple fact that Okahana suggested to amend the proposal by removing the lines that would include the Long Beach Union, K-BEACH and the Goldmine Yearbook in the allocation of the funds speaks volumes. He saw the unfair nature of the referendum as suggested by Vice-President Jolliff, and he spoke against it in his suggestion. | ||||||
| It seems that the senators missed the main point here: do they want to ensure that the Daily Forty-Niner lives or are they going to stand by on their watch and see it die? Finally, in the grand scheme of things, is seven dollars really asking a lot? A tuna sandwich, onion rings and a medium coke at CSULB's own Outpost Grill costs $7.16. A large latte at Starbucks costs over seven dollars. An extra seven dollars a semester computes to three cents a day. The students should have been given the choice to guarantee a long life to an integral campus publication but the senate decided to censor that choice. | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2005, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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