Has student government gone too far?

The Student Fee Committee, an arm of ASPSU, is responsible for managing PSU’s student fees and setting the budgets for all fee-funded areas. These areas include ASPSU, student publications, and student organizations and resource centers. Recently, however, the SFC appears to be testing the limits of their role at PSU.

First they pushed to reclassify many hourly wage jobs in student publications as student leadership awards, a move that will save the university money while stripping many student employees of protections under state and federal labor laws. The facts of this move are simple: They seek to take what is currently a job, with an hourly wage, and make it something other than a job, with no protections, and compensation paid as a scholarship.

Now the SFC, a small organization that enjoys the luxury of three academic advisers, is attempting to defund other adviser positions. The student publications adviser, the publications advertising adviser and at least one student organization adviser may all find their positions defunded if the SFC have its way. Let’s be clear: A committee made up largely of appointees who were not elected by the students of Portland State, who themselves have three advisers to turn to, are attempting to defund adviser positions for groups and organizations that directly serve the students of PSU.

The Vanguard serves the entire PSU community, faculty and students, and seeks to do so without advocacy or bias. We are the only organization on campus that serves so many and so diverse a group in so many different ways, and having an adviser with more than 30-years experience in the newspaper industry helps us to do that. The Vanguard is a more ethical, more balanced, more thorough and more fair organization because we have our adviser here to ensure that we are constantly asking ourselves the right questions and demanding the right answers on behalf of our readers.

This move is entirely inappropriate, and it goes beyond the limits of what the SFC is charged with doing.

The SFC is merely responsible for approving the student-fee budget, and yet they are attempting to reshape what it means to be a student employee, how student employee’s are paid, and whether or not student employees in various areas deserve the benefit of an adviser’s wisdom.

The SFC works for the students of Portland State University, and it’s time that you tell them how they are doing.