The Graduate Student Government executives are at it again. During a poorly advertised and ill-attended meeting over winter break, they proposed and pushed through a plan to increase graduate student activities fees by more than 70 percent. After just one semester of the current 40 percent increase, the GSG executives are asking for another increase that more than doubles last year’s $11 fee. Why is there such contradiction between the GSG’s position on university fees and its own practices? Where does this hypocrisy come from? This certainly puts into doubt the sincerity of the GSG executives’ past effort to oppose the mandatory university fee increases from several months ago.
It is not like the GSG is running a deficit. Research and analysis on GSG finances presented during Graduate Research Interaction Day 2004 titled “Financial Budgeting and Spending by the Graduate Student Government at the University of Maryland” showed the GSG did not spend all the money it collected since financial reporting started. In other words, unlike the rest of the university, the GSG has money to spare. Yet the amount allocated for student events has remained steady or has decreased in percentage terms, despite the current fee increase. What has risen is the amount allocated for stipends and salaries for executives and those hired by those executives.
Since fiscal year 2001, the stipends have increased by about 100 percent at the request of executives. These increases cannot be sustained without further fee increases, which current GSG executives have dismissed.
“The increase we passed on Friday will … cost students, per year, the approximate cost of … two burritos a year,” wrote GSG president E.L. “Doc” Hunter.
Well, unless one is clinically obese, for whom eating less would be healthy, fees of $25 would pay for a month’s worth of baby diapers or milk. So, while a graduate student’s child goes without milk, GSG executives pocket their stipends.
There is also the issue of how the fee increase was passed. Former GSG executive Susan Woda said about the process: “I’d also like to point out that the meeting notice failed to mention the fee legislation. … Don’t you think students should have been informed that such an increase would be considered at the meeting? Don’t you think assembly reps deserved an opportunity to converse with their constituents about such an increase before being asked to vote on it? Don’t you think the legislation should have been considered at a meeting during the academic semester when more students are apt to be on the campus and therefore more apt to participate in such an important decision?”
This is not the first time issues of such significance were handled this way. The very same executives attempted to pass fiscal budgets, changes to the GSG constitution or bylaws and calls for impeachment in this manner. Mr. “Democracy at Work” Hunter is quoted as boasting of large participation in the GSG Assembly since he became president while also lamenting the lack of participation. He is perhaps confused because the only type of democracy Hunter has experienced within the GSG is becoming its president by getting a mere 3 percent or so of the eligible vote, and that was while running unopposed. The fact is the level of participation in the GSG Assembly has never been high and has often gone below quorum as shown in the GRID 2004 presentation mentioned above.
Consider what has happened to Adam Lopez, a member of the GSG executive committee. He once said, “There must be some opportunity for the GSG constituency — that is, the entire graduate student body — to provide input to the process. This is why I am proposing that items added to the agenda during a meeting of the Assembly be tabled until a subsequent meeting.”
However, he failed to forward this idea when the fee increase was presented. This is the corrupting effect GSG money has. It would be better that the money not exist in the first place. The graduate student body should take back the GSG, cut back student activity fees to $10 or less per year, eliminate officer stipends and really negotiate reducing costs that are growing faster than inflation. And, if the current GSG executives resist, put the questions to referendum and call for the executives’ impeachment.
Soun P. Kwon is a graduate student in physics. He can be reached at spkwon@glue.umd.edu.
