Rice Student Association places power in the hands of the students

By SA Executive Board     11/15/11 6:00pm

We all love freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of speech. These ring strongly with all students, especially in our university setting. An important component of upholding these freedoms is maintaining an open, interactive and transparent environment. All college governments and the Student Association work with dedication to ensure that student voices and concerns are represented and acknowledged, in addition to making sure that the day-to-day operations of our campus maintain the high level of integrity that is so revered by our Rice University community.

This year, the SA began its annual process of collecting budget reports from the blanket tax organizations, as outlined in the SA Constitution. This process of reviewing blanket tax monies has been in place since the creation of the Constitution, providing for a mechanism to ensure that your blanket tax money is going to the proper place. However, with recent changes three years ago to the SA Constitution adding a "Blanket Tax Oversight" component of the by-laws, the SA Executive Officers felt that the process did not guarantee full objectivity, transparency and clarity that is so important in these circumstances.

Over the past five weeks, the SA executive officers have been in communication with blanket tax organization advisers and student leaders to collect feedback on the review process. They provided their opinions on how to make the process better, and they echoed our similar concerns that the current blanket tax review process was not clear and could be subject to bias.

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Therefore, the executive officers decided to take steps to revise the review process and propose a new amendment to our constitutional by-laws, incorporating the feedback of advisers and student organization leaders, in order to reduce potential bias and clarify the process. We did not aim to restrict the freedom of student organizations, pose bureaucratic language to confuse students or increase the power of the Senate. Actually, we attempted to do the exact opposite. We wanted to place more power in the hand of the organizations and decrease the power of the Senate in the review process. Many power-hungry politicians may call that crazy, but Rice students enjoy being unconventional. We never cared much for following political norms, anyway.

Thus, the Student Senate set out to address and remedy the concerns raised during discussion by proposing a by-law amendment.

First, in our amendment, we addressed the issue of the current blanket tax review process as being poorly defined and ambiguous. The use of an A-B-C-D-F grading system determined by words like "appropriate" and "inappropriate usage of funds" left the door open for potential subjectivity and bias. The current amendment replaces these indefinite qualifiers with more concrete criteria and a clearer mechanism for evaluation.

Most significantly, the measures have been taken in the proposed amendment to prevent the potential increases of SA power and bias (self or otherwise) mentioned in the article. Firstly, the budget review process has been split into two explicit steps: standard review and investigations. Additionally, both steps have committees with members determined by staff advisors, not SA Officers. Every step involves open communication with the Director of Student Activities and the blanket tax organizations so that all parties are on the same page. We think it is important to emphasize that during the standard review, the Standard Review Committee has no power to curtail any blanket tax monies because it cannot take any actions to introduce blanket tax change proposals to Senate. Such changes can only come directly from the student organizations themselves.

Furthermore, the amendment adds additional benchmarks in the inquiry resolution process that allow potential issues to be resolved internally. The introduction of a report to the Senate is utilized as a final step, only exercised if all other options have been exhausted.

Ultimately, final voting on blanket tax proposals is made by the student body, putting the power of the decision in your hands.

Georgia Lagoudas, Yoonjin Min, Ellen Liu are members of the SA Executive Board.

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