In light of two articles from Wednesday’s edition of The Post regarding the Budget Planning Council, I feel compelled to clear a few things up.
While the articles from The Post might have readers believing the most alarming news to come out of Issue 1 was that 62 percent of student voters have no clue what the BPC is (which is certainly troubling, no doubt), what is more telling about the relationship between the BPC and the student body is what the other 38 percent said.
According to official election results, among student voters who do know what the Budget Planning Council is, roughly 80 percent of them indicated that the BPC does not include enough student representation. The same portion indicated that the BPC does not respect student feedback and that the BPC was wrong in proposing a tuition increase to the Board of Trustees.
No wonder they haven’t made a serious effort to make themselves more known to students!
Even in light of these results, Vice President for Finance and Administration Stephen Golding has the gall to act surprised — because, after all, the BPC open forum was not well-attended by students. Well, the forum was incredibly under-advertised and held at a time that was very inconvenient for most students.
Additionally, when a student informed the BPC members at the forum that increasing tuition was actually exacerbating the problem of decreased state funding by generating revenue for banks and corporations who have a clear interest in destroying public higher education, one BPC member brushed off the comment as if the idea were absurd that banks who profit from student loans would use their immense power to gut public funding for education.
Not only was it surprising that the BPC was not already aware of this problem, but it was shocking that such high-ranking administrators would be so incredibly unaware of the sinister operations of the ruling class and, therefore, the current political landscape in which the university exists.
This serves as further evidence that the BPC and the unelected Board of Trustees are unfit to govern and make these incredibly important decisions on behalf of the entire university community.
Furthermore, I am afraid that The Post would have readers wrongly believe that the Budget Planning Council has put forth some effort to include the voice of the students in budgetary considerations.
The suggestion that the “allocation of General Fee funds reflect popular opinion” because there is a student advisory committee is, at best, an inappropriate conclusion that utterly lacks supporting evidence. At worst, that suggestion is a blatant lie.
While that sub-committee of the Budget Planning Council is composed mostly of students, there are only eight of them, and most are not elected. Unless there were a universitywide survey I was not informed of, their suggestions certainly do not automatically represent “popular opinion.”
In fact, I think it would be a safe bet to guess that “popular opinion” among students would not be in favor of throwing $145,000 at the (indoor football field) multipurpose center, considering the financial distress many students are feeling in light of the recent tuition and fee increases.
That is not to mention students’ distaste for being lied to by administrators such as Director of Athletics Jim Schaus, who presented to Student Senate assuring students they would not be paying a dime for the construction of the multipurpose center.
Lastly, it is important to note that while the current Student Senate administration fought tooth-and-nail against a student-led effort to include an issue on the election ballot asking students to evaluate the Board of Trustees, president-elect Zach George worked with student activists to at least pass the watered-down version that resulted in Issue 1.
That gives me hope that, despite the overwhelmingly top-heavy character of OU’s administration and the uncomfortably close ties between top administrators and the students elected to represent the student body, the tide is turning in favor of student power, and the university powers that be will not be able to suppress students’ voices much longer.
Tyler Barton is a senior studying chemistry and a student activist for the Student Power movement.
