Six of eight allowed on USSA trip

SALP plans to let six students attend an annual student government conference in Washington, D.C., while two student leaders must stay home because of a conflict that arose last week over the way tickets for the trip were purchased.

Natalee Webb, student government adviser, told ASPSU leaders last week that no students would be allowed to travel to the conference because she believed one student, Ryan Klute, purchased the airline tickets without approval, which is against university policy.

At a meeting yesterday with Student Activities and Leadership Programs officials and a mediator, ASPSU President Rudy Soto and Klute were told they could still not attend the March 14th United States Student Association’s Legislative Convention (LegCon) in Washington, D.C. Aimee Shattuck, interim director of SALP, said the six students who were not involved with the ticket purchases would now be allowed to attend the conference.

The conference focuses on legislative practices nationwide. Soto said LegCon is vital for student government training.

SALP is a student-fee funded organization of professionals who advise the majority of student groups on campus, including ASPSU.

Webb, who is also the interim assistant director of SALP, said she thinks Klute was able to purchase the tickets from Azumano Travel because he did not identify himself as a student. She said she thinks he also used a billing code, which students are not allowed to use.

Klute, senior policy adviser of ASPSU, has denied these allegations and said there must be a miscommunication between Azumano Travel and SALP because he merely tried to reserve the eight tickets, which is allowed.

After the parties involved met yesterday, the group agreed that Soto and Klute would stay behind because of Klute’s involvement in purchasing the tickets and because Soto gave Klute the task of reserving them.

“The number one priority going into it was to get the majority of students to be able to go,” Soto said. “As a negotiating tool, we had to offer ourselves up.”

Shattuck said the mediation went well and SALP has been looking into a way to update and make their policies clearer for students so problems like this will not occur. By the end of the school year, she said, SALP will hopefully have all their policies up on their website so they can be more visible and can be updated easily.

Aimeera Flint, secretary of the NAACP at PSU student group, is one of the six students who can now travel to LegCon. She said she was hoping to go on the trip to learn more about government and bring that knowledge back to the university. Flint said she admires Soto for offering himself up so she and other students who had nothing to do with the ticket purchases could go to D.C.

“I think that it is fair to us that had nothing to do with whatever issue that SALP had with ASPSU,” she said.

As members of the USSA board of directors, Soto and Klute would try to work out a way to attend the conference with money from USSA’s travel budget, Soto said.

“The most important thing is that Portland State is represented,” he said.