USSA Congress sparks debate

Pitt’s Student Government Board and the United States Student Association had a prolonged and… Pitt’s Student Government Board and the United States Student Association had a prolonged and nasty divorce last semester, and now it’s time for the custody fight.

Children are not at stake, thankfully, but rooms in the William Pitt Union are.

Last year, before the end of SGB’s formal relationship with USSA was even a glimmer in the eye of half of the board members, USSA had planned to have its annual National Student Congress at Pitt from the end of July through the first week in August.

According to USSA President Becky Wasserman, the organization tries to rotate the location of the congress by alternating coasts, and it was the East Coast’s turn. And because the William Pitt Union is a “beautiful facility,” centrally located in the city, Pitt won the honor this year.

SGB Member Todd Brandon Morris, who helped plan the event here and who has attended such events in past years, added that Pitt is an important, traditionally active campus for USSA, and it helps that it is close to “restaurants and night things.” Last year, the congress was held in student facilities on the University of California-Riverside’s campus, which Morris said lacked surrounding civilization.

Morris reserved the rooms for USSA’s week-long conference in the name of SGB because only student groups can reserve rooms in the Union. But after SGB severed its official relationship with its former partner in acronymic operation, SGB President Brian Kelly requested that Morris change the reservations.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate,” Kelly explained. “USSA is no longer aligned with Student Government Board.”

So Morris remade the reservations in the name of the Black Action Society, with the permission of SGB members Lauren Williams and Charis Jones, the elected president and vice president of BAS, respectively.

“We’re not going in blindly,” Williams said, pointing out that several BAS members, such as herself and Jones, had participated in various USSA activities in the past.

The whole situation would have been much more complicated, though, had the congress occurred during the school year. According to William Pitt Union Manager Christine Chergi, student organizations are not normally allowed to reserve rooms for outside, professional organizations. But, because the crunch for space is so diminished over the summer, “we relax our policies,” Chergi said.

Whew.

She added that USSA is not completely foreign to Pitt.

“It’s an organization that a lot of our students are affiliated with,” she said.

In reference to the fallout from the USSA-SGB split, Wasserman said that campus membership is not a defining criterion for the location of the congress. She added that the issue of USSA membership is far more controversial on Pitt’s campus than elsewhere.

“Campuses are usually excited to have us there,” she said.

Meanwhile, Kelly, who would not comment on whether he would run for re-election in the fall, said that he was fine with the arrangement, so long as the reservations were not in SGB’s name.

Jones, though, said she had seen the issue not so much as one of policy, since the vote had already taken place, but as one of teamwork and respect for Morris’s efforts in putting the congress together.

“If it’s just rooms, why couldn’t he keep on keepin’ on?” Jones said. “It didn’t need to be made an issue.”