EDITORIAL – Wish list for the incoming board

With another Student Government Board election in the bag, we think it’s important to offer… With another Student Government Board election in the bag, we think it’s important to offer up our hopes for the incoming board and the president-elect.

First and foremost, we abhor the idea of Mobile Campus being brought to Pitt. Many students don’t have text messaging packages, and others who can receive text messaging don’t want to pay to receive unwanted texts. Sure, you aren’t required to sign up for the service – and that might prove to be this program’s downfall, as we’re incredibly skeptical about the student body’s willingness to open their phones to spam. If you do sign up for the program, you’ll receive a minimum of two text-ads a day whether you want them or not. Yes, that’s right, two a day at the very least. Depending on your text-messaging rates, it could add up every month. It seems like our president-elect is trying to sell out the student body to a company that will make money off of our involvement in the program.

We’re also pretty sure that professors aren’t going to use the service. If they do, we hope they don’t abandon traditional methods of correspondence (e-mail and Courseweb work really well for us) with students because – as shocking as it might be – there are still people who don’t have cell phones. Gasp! This is a huge waste of money for the University, and we will be incredibly disappointed to see Mobile Campus come to Pitt.

With regard to allocations, we’d like to see a system that is more fair for smaller groups. The board already secured $125,000 for the spring semester to ensure that there would be less of a crunch when it comes to supplemental requests. That’s a start, and we hope that it’s a first step in the right direction toward helping smaller groups who are often under-funded.

Also, we’d like to see the larger groups, the former governance groups, be held more accountable for the large amount of money that they do receive. Now that the elections are over, board members shouldn’t be afraid to go back to these groups that endorsed them and pressure them to budget responsibly.

In turn, we think it’s absolutely necessary that student groups are more reasonable when budgeting and making supplemental requests. The allocations manual can seem incredibly intimidating, especially to smaller groups that have fewer resources. Thus, it’s imperative that SGB and student groups work together to come up with the most reasonable and responsible disbursement of finances possible.

Coordinating and consolidating similar programming would also be a fantastic way for groups to conserve resources and reach a broader audience. We’d like to see SGB encourage this behavior between our student groups as a way to effectively use our money.

We’d also like to see some sort of clause introduced into the allocations process that increases accountability for SGB requests. SGB has the power to grant money to student groups against the recommendation of the allocations committee – even when it comes to themselves. So, if SGB wants funding for a program, and allocations makes a recommendation to deny funding, all it takes is for SGB to vote to overturn the allocations recommendation and approve whatever monies they want. We want to see an end to this, possibly by granting the allocations committee more authority when it comes to allocating money to the board.

Everyone elected made campaign goals. We’d like to see the board working together to accomplish these promises. It’s time to abandon personal agendas and work for the greater good of the students. It’s absolutely possible to work together and accomplish personal goals – you’ll probably be more successful with the aid of fellow board members.

And finally, no matter who endorsed you or what slate you were on, you are members of one board, and you answer to the students – all students. When you make those hard decisions, think about what will make this campus better for everyone – even the people who didn’t vote.