Random thoughts on TU's student government

[greybeta]

In order to help my good Dutch LJ friend culculhen understand more about how student government works at the University of Tulsa, I will provide a short synopsis of how I think the system works.

Student government at the University of Tulsa is a rather complicated piece of political machinery. Each residence hall has its own hall government, which puts on programs specifically for its residents (the apartments have their own sort of hall government). Overseeing all the residence hall governments is the Residence Hall Association (RHA). Each hall gov't is supposed to send a rep to the RHA meetings to know what's going on with everyone else. Since it technically represents all the residents on campus, RHA is the students' liason with housing and dining services. RHA also puts on programs for the entire campus.

When I say I am a student senator, I am part of the Student Association (SA). SA represents the entire campus, so sometimes RHA and SA butt heads over how to change things. I'm familiar with how the Tulsa system works because at one point I was the vice president of my hall gov't, RHA rep, and a student senator.

Ideally, the residents or constitutuents will help you out. However, we follow the 20/80 principle...twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. As VP for my hall gov't, I helped plan and set up all the events. I reported on matters both ways for RHA and my hall gov't. As a student senator, I deal with legislation to improve things on campus. As the senior chair of the finanical appropriations committee (this committee does so much work it requires two chairs to handle its business), I determine how much money should be given to the organizations on campus.

One day, I learned that I payed a lot of money in student activity fees. We only have four thousand students on campus, yet the budget for TU's Student Association is over six hundred thousand dollars (not all of it is student fees, but students do get to say how that money is used). I wanted a say in where that money goes, so I got involved in student government.

And I currently do it for free.

Comments

[moocowrich.livejournal.com]

Howdy,

I'm mostly commenting to let you know that I'm adding you to my friends list. You seem amazingly interesting.

I'm involved in student government at Beloit College (in Beloit, Wisconsin) and your student activity fee seems fairly normal. We have 1200 students and our student activities budget is approximately $250,000. Six people oversee it, and I've been one of them for the past two years. Student government is really exciting.

[culculhen.livejournal.com]

This helps, thanks (but one question remains, with how many are you in total?)

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Howdy.

Six people for 250,000 dollars? What are the checks and the balances?

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Each hall gov't has four officers, and anywhere from six to ten members overall.

RHA also has four officers, plus a position to handle conferences (RHA attends a lot of confereces to learn what other residence hall associations are doing). And there is a rep from each hall gov't(usually the vice president of that particular hall gov't), which brings the total to twelve to fifteen people.

SA has a maximum of thirty-seven elected senators (we only have twenty four). Our Cabinet consists of nine appointed executive directors, each with certain focus. Our Judicial Council has seven appointed members. We elect a President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary. Our Exec team is rounded out by an appointed Chief of Staff who heads the Cabinet. So we have many people in my student government.

[moocowrich.livejournal.com]

The student government body is made up of a representative of each recognized club on campus that receives funding from student activities fees and a representative from each floor. In all reality, somewhere between 40 and 50 people attend each week.

Come springtime, the members of our Budget Committee (all 6 of us) present a comprehensive budget to the student body. The general body discusses and approves it. From there on, Budget Committee has certain funds that it can play with without even telling the body if we don't want to. There is a whole lot of room for being shady and stealing a lot of money. They trust the committee a whole lot. More than I'd like them to, sometimes.

All in all, I imagine if the members of the committee wanted to be thieves together, we could embezzle at least $10,000 without anybody noticing. But we don't. We're all too honest for that. The checks and balances don't really work when all the people with power are corrupt, and with only 1200 students we can't have a large student government. We have to trust that those who care about student government are somehow worthy.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Trust is the hard part. We have to deal with the people who think we're cheating them out of money every so often because we use confidential criteria. There's been a push for "open sunshine" about the way we give out money, but I'm highly suspicious of doing so. Why wouldn't organizations just fill out for the maximum everytime? If they don't know, they're more likely to be honest.