There was a letter to the editor in Monday’s Emerald signed by members of the Climate Justice League (Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Heart!) denouncing the ACFC’s recent decision not to fund OSPIRG. In part, the letter said:

“Although OSPIRG provided all of the materials and information the committee asked for, ACFC never clearly articulated a reason to not fund OSPIRG, except a vague sense of uncertainty.”

Of course, those who have read anything about the ACFC’s decision understand that the ACFC clearly outlined why they decided not to fund OSPIRG. Even more surprising is that many of the signers of the letter — including Sen. Jeremy Blanchard — attended the meeting and heard the ACFC’s reasons in person. A response was printed yesterday, signed by ASUO Senate President Nick Gower and Sen. Demic Tipitino (in addition to many others, including myself) that said:

“The problems with OSPIRG were clearly articulated, and they have been for years. OSPIRG sends student money off campus to pay non-students to lobby for issues that have little relation to the University of Oregon campus. Additionally, OSPIRG’s system is structured in a manner that partial funding would make the organization ineffective and an even greater waste of student dollars.”

Do the Planeteers need this outlined again? Let’s go “bulletpoints” on this one, shall we?

• OSPIRG was a new contract (even if they are an existing group), and as such giving them $117,000 off the bat wasn’t something the ACFC wanted to do. Also, the question of OSPIRG’s model was brought up (off-campus employees).
• The ACFC felt at a lower level of funding, OSPIRG would not be able to effectively do their job, making them even more inefficient.

Those two reasons outline why full and partial funding wasn’t something the ACFC wanted to do. At this point in time, I can’t believe the signers of the initial letter actually said something that blatantly misleading and wrong, then sent it to be printed and distributed on campus.

In any case, here’s a nugget of joy we can all use in a time like this. It seems particularly relevant.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 10:00 by D and is filed under ASUO, Campus, Crazy, Fiscal Responsibility, Media, Narcissism, Ol' Dirty Emerald, OSPIRG, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.