Ad-hoc Presidential Committee and the Press Office

At yesterday’s Student Council meeting, proposals to begin implementing 2 of the 5 proposed ASM reforms were passed. The first was a Jeff Wright plan to form an ad-hoc committee to meet this summer and to make recommendations to Student Council on implementing a presidential system and other constitutional changes. This committee would be made up of 14 people including 6 at large members who would not have to be from within ASM. This isn’t really any kind of concrete reform, so there were really no major objections. The committee would only be submitting ideas for Student Council to debate and approve, thus the majority of the discussion focused on the number of members the committee should include.

There was however one very interesting point brought by Rep. Carter, the law school representative who received his undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky. According to him, UK has a presidential system of student government and apparently they regularly had upwards of 15% turnout in their elections and candidates would often draw 150-200 students to rallies held to announce their candidacy. Sounds likes empirical evidence of the presidential system working to increase student interest and involvement to me.

The other reform measure that was voted on and passed was the creation of the press office. The model they decided on will feature 5 members and will replace the current Campus Relations committee. Despite disagreements from the CB

That press office is too big.

I’m alright with a 5 person press office, if they had enough duties for 5 people. The way the office is being structured: a press secretary, assistant press secretary both paid hourly wages and then 3 other members who would be given a stipend. The 3 additional members would be divided up to specialize in 3 areas: Student Council, SSFC and ASM campaigns.

These 3 extra members are entirely unnecessary and don’t help to fix any of the problems that the press office was designed to solve. First of all, in order to keep up on what goes on in each of these areas they would have to attend the meetings. In fact, SC included in their job description a clause that requires them to go to “as many meetings as necessary” to perform their duties. Why not just have a current member of each of these organizations designated to report to the press secretary? The members have to go the meeting and keep up on what goes on in each meeting. The structure will force them to spend the vast majority of their time going to meetings and learning about what ASM is doing rather than engaging in any type of outreach. A current member could just send the press secretary an email or give them a call and in 15 minutes catch them up what important events happened. Paying someone to attend the meetings, even if it is just a small stipend, and do a job the people at that meeting are doing anyways is incredibly senseless bureaucracy. Besides, wouldn’t a member of each of the organizations have a much better idea of what happened than some random observer? After attending the meeting last night, I guarantee that someone like Jeff Wright or Jessica Pavlic understands what exactly happened much better than I did (There were some members of SC who were clueless though). Not to mention what motivation would these members of the press office have to go to the meetings. They get their stipend whether they go or not and a vague mandate of quasi-required attendance doesn’t help either.

If the 5 person press office had been given a wider mandate of duties, more of a public relations and advertising type role as suggested by the CB (and again here), I think there could be enough work to potentially justify 5 people. There are enough tasks between computer stuff and web design, advertising, student outreach and media relations to keep a couple people busy. As it stands the press office was not charged with doing much more than writing press releases for ASM members. The discussion was focused around how to best communicate with the press, not the students. Its time ASM realized that there are other ways to communicate with students than just the campus papers. I would say the press office has come down on the side of the Masse/BH interpretation as opposed to the DC/CB version.

How does the DC not have an article about last night’s ASM meeting?

I have no idea. Not a word in the news section, on the homepage or the print version. With such big issues on the table that they clearly knew about, such as the electing of the new chair and the reform items that were still on the table, not having a story about the meeting is simply inexcusable. When the only way the vast majority of students have any way of finding out about something like this is through the campus papers, you can’t fail to even mention it the next day.

I guess you can add this to the list of reasons ASM needs a press office. Though in this case it clearly wasn’t lack of communication or incompetence on the part of ASM, as evidenced by the BH article, but rather the blame on this one lies squarely on the shoulders of the DC.

Edit: They did include a couple of sentences about it at the bottom of the Oliver Delgado story. However, the gist of my criticism still applies. They should have made both bigger stories. These are prominent campus issues concerning organizations that students need to find out about. When the coverage doesn’t even mention the passage of the press office proposal, that is just not giving the story the space it deserves. The story merited its own article and headline.

“Student Government” Proclamation

Edit – please view this post at its new location

You may have already read about it on the BH blogs in Smathers’ live blog

6:51
Sol: Technically, I’m the presiding officer of every branch of ASM.
There is one thing I’d like to do: I’d like to sign a proclamation – to remember “Student Government.” Oh Sol, I love you!

Signed into “law.” Ok Sol.

Well, I have managed to get my hands on an exclusive, officially signed copy of said proclamation.