USAC funding controversy needs help in cleaning up

Michael Weiner Weiner is a fourth-year history
and political science student. His column analyzing issues of
interest to the UCLA community runs on Mondays. E-mail [email protected].

It’s official. The controversy over student group funding
that has dominated the proceedings of the Undergraduate Students
Association Council for the past few months is a complete and total
mess.

Thus far, the only clear thing to come out of USAC’s
effort to make sure its funding guidelines are in line with a
recent U.S. Supreme Court decision is the realization that this
council is so bitterly divided that it is unlikely that its members
will ever be able to agree on a workable solution.

USAC did manage to pass a revision to its bylaws in January that
seems to bring the funding distribution system into line with the
court decisions. But council members cannot agree on just what it
is that the vaguely-worded revision means for the actual
functioning of student government.

Recent meetings have been plagued by infighting and inaction.
USAC members bicker with each other and with representatives of the
administration. Elected officials stage walkouts. And now, student
advocacy group leaders have jumped into the fray, angrily
protesting at last week’s meeting that they have been largely
left out of a process that could have a huge impact on the way
their organizations’ function.

Meanwhile, the council does not appear to be any closer to a
final resolution of the issue.

The inquiry into student group funding came to the forefront
last summer when Administrative Representative Lyle Timmerman
questioned the legality of the base budgets that had been
distributed to student advocacy groups. Timmerman has said that
USAC’s funding system was outdated especially in the wake of
the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2000 decision, University of
Wisconsin v. Southworth, which validated the use of mandatory
student fees but decreed that those fees must be distributed on a
“content-neutral” basis.

Timmerman said council has yet to prove they are distributing
funds fairly. He pointed to the fact that four SAGs received 40
percent of the total base budget funding. President Elizabeth
Houston and Facilities Commissioner Steve Davey, who were both
elected with support from the Greek system, agreed. But members of
the Praxis slate, who control a majority of the council’s
seats, are hesitant to take away funding from the minority student
groups that make up their primary constituency.

The issue was further complicated in December when a U.S.
District Court judge in Wisconsin issued a ruling elaborating on
Southworth. More judicial activity is expected in the coming
months.

For an undergraduate student government with deep divisions from
the outset of its term, dealing with the issue effectively has
proven to be a formidable challenge.

While USAC was able to enact a revision to its bylaws — albeit
a change so oblique that officials cannot even agree on what it
means — the council is now engaged in a much more difficult
process that could have much more far-reaching consequences. Now,
President Houston is questioning the very legitimacy of the
existence of student advocacy groups, the 20 organizations that, by
virtue of their special status, receive office space in Kerckhoff
Hall and base budget allocations. Houston would like to see those
groups relegated to equal status with the nearly 450 other
organizations that are registered with the Center for Student
Programming.

For Praxis council members and SAG leaders, this turn of events
would be completely unacceptable. That is why elected officials
have walked out of committee meetings and that is why the SAG
leaders angrily converged on Kerckhoff last week. From their
perspective, a change so drastic should not be made without their
input.

Surprisingly, the only representatives of the administration who
have chimed in on this issue so far are Timmerman and Center for
Student Programming Director Berky Nelson. Winston Doby, vice
chancellor of student affairs, and Bob Naples, assistant vice
chancellor of student and campus life, have apparently delegated
the issue to Timmerman.

The lack of input from administrative higher-ups might be part
of the problem. In the past, the UC Office of the President has
created guidelines for implementing court decisions that dealt with
the distribution of student fees.

This was the case in 1997, when the UC issued a six-page
document subsequent to the 1993 California Supreme Court decision,
Smith v. Regents and the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision,
Rosenberger v. Rector. The guidelines were last revised in October
1999.

A UC spokeswoman said last week that she does not anticipate any
change in the current guidelines. Apparently, the university is
content to let the students play lawyers and muck about for a
solution. In the case of UCLA’s divided and divisive student
government, this isn’t working well at all.

No matter what happens with the funding issue, there will be a
lot of people who are unsatisfied. A clear statement of policy by
the University of California would do much to clean up the mess
that USAC has proven unable to clean up by itself.