OSA decision still pending

CORVALLIS–PSU Student Body President Rudy Soto skirted questions Friday about whether he planned to withhold more than $100,000 that student government would contribute to the Oregon Student Association next year, after a discussion about his proposal to alter the organization’s internal structure.

Near the end of the nearly two hour discussion on Soto’s proposal–not knowing whether the board of directors would accept, try to alter, or reject the proposal–the chair of the OSA board of directors asked Soto whether he planned to release the money before a decision was made.

“The board needs to understand what your next step is,” said Emily McLain, who is also the University of Oregon student body president.

Other members of the board and people in the audience asked Soto similar questions.

“Will you tell them [the Student Fee Committee] to hold the dues or will you release your control over these fee committee members?” asked Tiffani McCoy, Western Oregon University’s student body president.

Soto would not discuss his future plans concerning the proposal or whether the SFC would let OSA have access to its PSU money. He did say that he felt the board’s discussion was helpful, more so than previous proposal discussions.

“We’re going to re-evaluate things after the meeting,” Soto said, later adding, “My plan has always been that we would discuss the proposal and re-evaluate it.”

Controversy over the proposal

The proposal became the spotlight of controversy after Soto asked the Student Fee Committee to put Portland State’s portion of the OSA’s budget in a reserve account until the OSA board of directors accepted his proposal.

OSA, a non-profit group that lobbies for student issues to the legislature, is funded with dues from students across nine schools in Oregon. At PSU, OSA collects its dues through the Associated Students of Portland State University.

Members of the OSA board of directors met the ultimatum with criticism, questioning Soto’s future intentions at Friday’s meeting.

After much discussion, Soto said he felt more comfortable making possible changes to his proposal, something that many board members said they felt was necessary.

“We all know there’s some major problems,” said Javier Torres, the vice president of the Mt. Hood Community College student government association. “There’s going to have to be some type of negotiations.”

Background

Soto’s proposal, drafted with his senior policy advisor Ryan Klute, would create a new OSA board to work alongside the current board of directors. Called the general assembly, this new board would recommend lobbying issues to the board of directors, it would have the ability to set membership dues for all OSA schools and it would elect the officers of the OSA board of directors.

The proposal would give larger OSA schools, such as PSU, the most representatives in the general assembly. A school would have a representative in the general assembly for every 2,500 full-time students enrolled. Each school gets at least one representative.

One complaint that board members, as well as students statewide, have had with the proposal is that PSU, Oregon State and University of Oregon would have a disproportionate amount of votes. PSU, UO and OSU would have five, six, and seven votes, respectively, according to the proposal, while the six other OSA schools would each have one.

Representatives from both affiliate boards of OSA, the Oregon Students of Color Coalition and the Oregon Student Equal Rights Alliance, spoke at the meeting about problems they had with the proposal. They said they were concerned that they were not referenced in the proposal and not invited to the meeting where it was proposed.

Also those representatives questioned whether the general assembly membership, which would be appointed by each school’s student body president, would be made up of a diverse mix of people.

Although the possibility of creating a committee to discuss the proposal in depth was brought up, nothing was decided at Friday’s meeting. McLain said it seemed that board members were interested in “creating a committee that would do in-depth research on the potential effects of the proposal on OSA’s structure.”

Friday’s meeting, held in Oregon State University’s student union, clamored to an abrupt end when university officials told students could not stay in the union past midnight. The next board of directors meeting is in March, without a definite date.

After the meeting Soto said he was satisfied with the discussions and that progress was being made. He said he would have liked to see some sort of decision made to create a committee to discuss the proposal.

Some OSA board members were open to looking at the proposal, Soto said. Even so, he added, “I think that there were others that wanted to stall it.”