The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

Vote ‘NO’ on the new constitution

ASCOCC Needs to Make Big Changes

Staff

The Broadside

The Broadside recommends a vote of “NO” on the ASCOCC constitution. Although it is commendable that the members of student government have spent many hours working to revise a flawed document, the students of COCC deserve a better constitution than the one currently up for vote. Therefore The Broadside recommends the following changes.

The constitution requires members of student government to only take one credit hour per year. This is absurd, if student government is to be truly representative of the student body, they must be active students, who attend class with the rest of us. If not, they may become distant from the student body and use their position in to merely collect an extra pay check every month instead of concentrating on the point of college, which is to get a degree and graduate. Members of student government should be required to take at least eight credit hours per term, anything less would detract from what representatives are supposed to be, students.

Term limits should be required. We are a community college, and as such most students graduate and move on within a few years. However, several members of student government have been serving for many years. Term limits are needed to continually provide fresh voices and new ideas and to not allow members to ride a gravy train year after year of $750 dollar monthly stipends.

Our student leaders should obtain good grades as well. Grades are a marker by which one can determine a student’s work ethic and intelligence. The proposed constitution requires our leaders to only have a cumulative GPA of 2.0, it should be 2.5. Our leaders should be the best and brightest of our student body, not those just skating along.

There should be a committee set up to allocate student fees that is made up of both students and members of student government. OSU-Cascades allocates its funds in a similar manner, programs and clubs must present a budget and then a student fee committee reviews the proposed budgets and then approves a budget for next year. ASCOCC does not do this and it decides budgets without any chance of review by the student body. This permits clubs or programs that are unpopular with student government to not receive the funding they deserve. Level heads should determine how money is allocated, since student fees are our money, the student body should have a say in how they are spent.

The most glaring omission on the constitution is a lack of any sort of judiciary or review process. As it stands, student government can vote out any member without any chance for that member to appeal. There is also no chance for a student to appeal a decision of the student government. Students need the opportunity to seek other opinions on decisions that affect their lives.

The students of COCC deserve a living document that can govern it into the future. The constitution currently up for vote has many flaws, flaws that ASCOCC has been urged to correct. Until these omissions are corrected, the students of COCC should vote “NO” on the constitution.

Have an opinion?

We’d love to hear it. The Broadside wants to know what you think. If you have an opinion or a letter to the editor that you’d like to see in the paper, here is the criteria:

• 250 words maximum

• Due by 5 p.m. Monday, 9 days before publication

• Anonymous letters will be printed at the discretion of The Broadside staff

• We reserve the right to withhold publication of letters containing hate speech, erroneous information, unverifiable information or attacks on others.

• Due to spatial restrictions, we may run letters on The Broadside’s Web site or hold letters for publication in a later issue.

• We will make every effort to accommodate immediate insertion in the publication.

Letters can be e-mailed to [email protected] or hand delivered to the Broadside newsroom in Campus Center 102.

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  • B

    BrendaMay 13, 2010 at 8:39 am

    Hi Jeffrey,

    Thank you for your comment about this and bringing it to the attention of The Broadside so I have the opportunity to respond. No, I did not use any ASCOCC resources to send out an email. I did not use any “lists” from anything that I may have access to that a typical student would not have equal access to. I did not use the “offices” resources. I know better than to do that.

    However, college faculty and staff have used those resources you speak of to promote specific candidates in this election. I think there is a huge difference when I as a student ask for another students vote compared to a faculty or staff member who uses their email lists of students in their classes (or employees) to campaign for specific students. I as a student am not in a position of coercion (I do not grade those students or employ them).

    Thanks again for the opportunity for clarification.

    Brenda

    Reply
  • B

    BrendaMay 13, 2010 at 8:39 am

    Hi Jeffrey,

    Thank you for your comment about this and bringing it to the attention of The Broadside so I have the opportunity to respond. No, I did not use any ASCOCC resources to send out an email. I did not use any “lists” from anything that I may have access to that a typical student would not have equal access to. I did not use the “offices” resources. I know better than to do that.

    However, college faculty and staff have used those resources you speak of to promote specific candidates in this election. I think there is a huge difference when I as a student ask for another students vote compared to a faculty or staff member who uses their email lists of students in their classes (or employees) to campaign for specific students. I as a student am not in a position of coercion (I do not grade those students or employ them).

    Thanks again for the opportunity for clarification.

    Brenda

    Reply
  • J

    Jeffrey JensenMay 9, 2010 at 9:59 am

    The question I want to see investigated is the e-mail “blast” sent by Brenda Pierce on Saturday May 8th 2010 at 7:00PM. She seems like a qualified candidate but I feel her use of ASCOCC resources to campaign may be unethical. The white house staff cannot legally use the peoples resources for political gain, and I feel it is discouraging of student body participation for the marketing coordinator of ASCOCC to campaign for a position using the “offices” resources. One of your points against the new constitution is term limits, and this case is just another example of a grab and hold on power. Using our resources against her opponents is fine until you realize that her opponents by definition has to be ONE OF US!!

    Reply
  • J

    Jeffrey JensenMay 9, 2010 at 9:59 am

    The question I want to see investigated is the e-mail “blast” sent by Brenda Pierce on Saturday May 8th 2010 at 7:00PM. She seems like a qualified candidate but I feel her use of ASCOCC resources to campaign may be unethical. The white house staff cannot legally use the peoples resources for political gain, and I feel it is discouraging of student body participation for the marketing coordinator of ASCOCC to campaign for a position using the “offices” resources. One of your points against the new constitution is term limits, and this case is just another example of a grab and hold on power. Using our resources against her opponents is fine until you realize that her opponents by definition has to be ONE OF US!!

    Reply