Publius Awakened

I’ve written a great deal over the past four months about the need for greater transparency in Student Government Board’s operations and I’ve been pleased to also document the progress made by SGB President Charlie Shull in making SGB more open.

Indeed, SGB is becoming more open every week making changes that excite me as well as other student journalists involved in campus media but I’ve started to question the extent to which rank-and-file students are taking advantage of this new transparency.

To find out if students are paying attention, I asked a random sample of 10 students a series of four questions about SGB, the source of SGB’s funds and the allocations process.

The questions are as follows:

1. Where does the money in SGB’s budget come from?

2. Do you know what the Student Activity Fee is and if so how much is it?

3. Where do the proceeds from the Student Activity Fee go?

4. Can you describe the allocations process? Read the rest

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In a discussion on WPTS-FM’s Media Roundtable last Wednesday, Student Government Board member Phil LaRue voiced his support for allowing individual students to speak for or against specific allocation requests during SGB’s public meetings.

LaRue said that it was something he hoped to see happen in the future and said that he would be discussing it with the rest of SGB in the coming weeks. This is something that I’ve lobbied for over the past few months and a reform that would encourage students who aren’t either members of SGB or leaders of campus organizations to take an active role in deciding where Student Activity Fee money is spent.

I should have followed up on this last week but I’ll be working on a larger post on this issue in the weeks to come and hopefully LaRue will make some progress in this initiative. It has the potential to slow meetings down but, when student money is being spent, we should recognize the right of students to voice their opinion before allocations decisions are made.

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Student Government Board President Charlie Shull started the semester off right when he disclosed the location of a traditionally secret SGB retreat and promised to increase transparency in SGB through his “Behind the Glass Door” program.

Before last night’s meeting, Shull’s proposal last week to move SGB meetings from the eighth floor of the Union down to Nordy’s Place was the most public example of this “Behind the Glass Door” initiative and it won’t be occurring for some time.

In an interview on Monday, Shull said that the plan to move to Nordy’s Place is being held up by the fact that SGB doesn’t have a password and username for the online room reservation system that student groups use to reserve space for events. Shull said that he expects to receive a password and username today so that he can begin work on reserving Nordy’s Place.

But moving Tuesday night meetings to Nordy’s Place is a minor proposal compared to the significant change in the allocations process unveiled at last night’s board meeting. Specifically, board members last night publicly discussed allocations requests and revealed their reasons for voting to either grant or reject each request. Read the rest

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Student Government Board President Charlie Shull will be unveiling a significant change in the allocations procedure at tonight’s SGB meeting. Designed to increase transparency, the allocations decision-making process will now take place during the public meetings on Tuesday nights rather than in the closed-door meetings of the allocations committee, Shull said.

Shull said that this is a new process for the Board and that it can’t expect to be executed perfectly on the first night it’s implemented but, even if there are a few hiccoughs at tonight’s meeting, this represents a significant step forward in the allocations process.

Meetings of the Allocations Committee will still take place behind closed doors but Shull does plan to make minutes of these meetings available on the web. Shull said that he has not yet discussed making the minutes available online with Allocations Chair Matthew Grau and thus the plan for the minutes will take longer to implement.

Read more about these and other SGB developments in my Wednesday column published in The Pitt News and on this blog.

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The Pittsburgh Department of Public Works banned sledding on a hill in Frick Park and one in Schenley Park last week erecting a number of signs that read “no sled riding permitted” in bold red letters, the Post-Gazette reported.

Described as a “public service announcement” by Director of Public Works Rob Kaczorowski, the ban can be enforced by the police but violation of the ban is not punishable with a fine and renegade sledders will not be arrested.

Instead, the ban is an effort to make “people aware that [sledding] is not a sanctioned use of the property,” Kaczorowski said. Of course, with two incidents at Frick Park the weekend before the signs were posted, the ban is also an attempt to limit the city’s liability in the case of injury and protect the city from lawsuits.

Without any plan for actual enforcement or a fine for people who violate the ban and with sledding still permitted on popular Flagstaff Hill, Pitt students shouldn’t be too inconvenienced by the new signs in Frick and Schenley parks. But the ban disrupted a winter tradition for many Pittsburghers who’ve followed the directions of the sign and stopped sledding on their favorite hill. Read the rest

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This year’s Student Government Board is comprised of nine talented student leaders whose individual initiatives could make this university a better place.

For instance, board member Zack Bombatch wants to see every Pitt shuttle stop physically marked similar to the way that current Port Authority routes are marked. Bombatch said that his role is to talk to the city and the University and bring them together to solve this problem in the students’ best interests.

Another promising initiative is Phil LaRue’s plan to create an “online sustainability resource” that tells students when and where to recycle both on campus and in student-heavy neighborhoods like Shadyside and North Oakland.

These are both projects that have the potential to benefit students and they are complemented by SGB’s overall goals for the year that include making Pitt a more environmentally friendly campus and increasing student participation in SGB.

Regrettably these laudable broad initiatives were overshadowed by the fact that they were drafted at a two-day SGB retreat last weekend held at an undisclosed location and paid for with funds from the Student Activities Fee that SGB allocated itself. Read the rest

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Some of you might have noticed newly inaugurated Student Government Board President Charlie Shull’s comments in Thursday’s Pitt News where he said that he “couldn’t discuss specific goals the new board wants to accomplish” until after SGB’s two-day retreat at an “undisclosed location.”

I was mildly surprised by Shull’s lack of specifics but the two-day retreat at an undisclosed location really caught my attention. Two questions stuck out in my mind: Who was paying for it? Why was it undisclosed?

I covered SGB last semester and the previous Board’s lack of transparency prepared me for an unpleasant and labyrinthine experience in trying to learn more about this retreat at an undisclosed location. All sorts of scenarios crossed my mind including SGB staying in Nemacolin on the students’ dime. Read the rest

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If you spend $21,765 on a new Honda Accord, you can choose to customize at least 30 different features on the car including whether it’s a manual or automatic, what kind of mats are on the inside and if it comes with a first aid kit or not. You can customize the car to fit your needs and goals and build the best vehicle for you as an individual.

In contrast, if you spend $23,042 on a year’s out of state tuition to attend the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, you are ordered to fulfill six “Foundational Skills Requirements” and 13 “General Education Requirements” that include courses in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and – in a nod to Leftists multiculturalism – “Global Citizenship.”

It’s natural for the purchaser to make decisions in a business transaction but at Pitt, we pay the University large sums of money and then allow them to make momentous decisions for us. After all, the gen ed and “Foundational Skills” requirements imposed on us by the University amount to 19 required classes – that’s four semesters of our college experience.

I can’t speak for my readers but I came to Pitt for an education that would benefit me professionally and personally throughout the rest of my life not an education that University bureaucrats decide will make me a better “citizen of the world.” Read the rest

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Freshly back from break and facing a new semester un-menaced by proposals for a tuition tax, I understand how tempting it must be to turn our collective eyes away from local issues and once again focus our advocacy on Africa’s ills but to do so would be shortsighted.

A lot has happened while we’ve been away on break and it all justifies a closer attention to local issues on our part.

For instance, the make-up of City Council has changed significantly and that legislative body now has a new President. Elected with five votes on Monday, Darlene Harris represents the North Side and was a supporter of the Fair Share Tax. Harris is also notable as a product of the city’s Democratic machine and has been identified by Randall Taylor, a former colleague on the School Board, as an anti-intellectual with class biases.

She may have been a compromise candidate voted into office by Bill Peduto but she doesn’t promise to be a friend to Pittsburgh’s students. Read the rest

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