The Association of Student Governments represents all 17 schools in the UNC System, but N.C. State student leaders, past and present, disagree over its effectiveness and N.C. State’s role in it.
This has sparked controversy and discussion in Student Senate about the future of the University’s involvement in ASG. However, several student leaders commenting on the situation say they aren’t involved with or informed about ASG’s activities.
ASG is a statewide, student-run organization whose goal is to lobby for and represent students at the UNC Board of Governors. The ASG President sits on the BOG and is the only student able to speak at the meetings without approval. ASG is also the only student government organization recognized by North Carolina General Statutes.
Alum Ethan Harrelson, who served as N.C. State’s 2011-2012 Student Senate President, said ASG allows students from all the campuses to speak with one voice.
“I personally think it is the only way to bring together students with different opinions and create a consensus to take to the Board of Governors and North Carolina Legislature,” Harrelson said in an email interview.
Chancellor Randy Woodson also said ASG’s function to gather the collective voice of the students of the UNC System is critical.
A number of current student leaders, including student body president, Andy Walsh and student senate president, Regan Gatlin, have repeatedly criticized ASG for their seeming lack of accountability and communication with the University.
“I think it is kind of important, especially for an organization that represents a lot of other student bodies across the state, to stay accountable to the people they are receiving money from,” Gatlin said.
“I’ve had a love-hate relationship with ASG,” Walsh said. “I love the theory behind it. I hate the application of it. I hate the financial application of it. I hate the history of some of the student leaders who have been in it, because the accountability hasn’t been there.”
Eileen Coombes, who has served as the staff adviser for N.C. State Student Government for the past five years, said she recognizes ASG’s potential as a student advocacy group — as well as its lack of tangible outcomes.
“There’s a ton of potential,” Coombes said. “I just don’t think there is anyone challenging that potential, or the peer-to-peer challenge isn’t working for the organization.”
The UNC ASG Removal Act going through committee in the N.C. State Student Senate reflects Coombes’ thoughts.
Both Walsh and Gatlin said they haven’t made any extraordinary efforts to reach out to ASG and said they believed it was ASG’s job to communicate with the campuses. Gatlin and Walsh also said there had been trouble with the ASG emailing service, and they weren’t getting emails about the meetings and legislation at the beginning of the year.
“We are lacking a lot of communication with ASG,” Gatlin said. “I do not think that is necessarily any fault of the student body officers of the past. They aren’t reaching out to the student bodies as a whole or doing anything for the students they supposedly represent.”
Lack of Attendance
Each university in the UNC System gets four voting delegates at ASG. While the ASG website lists four delegates for N.C. State, only one, Rutger Blankley, a senior in nuclear engineering, has been regularly attending the meetings as Walsh’s proxy. Walsh has only attended one meeting and Gatlin has never attended ASG. The fourth delegate is inactive. Gatlin has named a proxy, but hadn’t followed up with him at the time of the interview.
Blankley meets with Walsh before ASG meetings to go over the legislation and to he represents the University thoroughly. Walsh said Blankley’s role as proxy is sufficient for the purpose of attending and interacting at ASG meetings. Blankley also sits on the Finance and Budget Committee and recognizes that there are fundamental issues with the process.
“I think there are more fundamental things holding them back,” Blankley said, citing travel costs and administrative overhead as issue areas. “We’re trying to increase the amount of funding that goes back to the students.”
Blankley said it seems like N.C. State already does all the things ASG wants to do.
“For the most part, I’ve just been hanging out, going to the meetings and representing Andy,” Blankley said. “Andy and I have had talks about ASG.”
Blankley said ASG President Cameron Carswell and her vice president are doing a good job this year with restructuring the organization.
“We had our reservations, but it seems to have been working out great,” Blankley said.
According to Chapter 1, Article 3 of the Student Body Statutes, Blankley and other active delegates should also be reporting to the Student Senate Public Affairs Committee. Several representatives interviewed for this story did not know anyone from N.C. State had been attending the ASG meetings.
Sean Pavia, Public Affairs Committee Chair and sophomore in sociology, told the Government Operations Committee Feb. 6 that he was unaware of the requirement until recently.
Also, even though Blankley has been attending the meetings, no delegates or proxies have been officially confirmed or recognized by N.C. State’s Student Senate, as is also required under Chapter 1, Article 3 of the Student Body Statutes.
Some senators, however, have criticized N.C. State’s lack of attendance at ASG meetings even as they’ve criticized ASG itself.
“We need to try to participate before we try to make changes,” said sophomore management major, Megan Wright, who chairs the Student Senate’s Tuition and Fees Committee.
Past leaders also agree that there needs to be more involvement on N.C. State’s part.“If N.C. State does not go to ASG meetings, then N.C. State students are not being represented at the Board of Governors level,” Harrelson said.
Walsh, however, does not see the value to attending the meetings.
“What’s the value to our student body? To this day I haven’t been able to find one,” Walsh said.
Role of ASG
What many student leaders haven’t recognized is the role ASG and the BOG play in the tuition and fees process. Essentially, without attending ASG meetings, N.C. State students aren’t being represented at the BOG or the General Assembly, who have the final say in tuition and fee increases.
“The Tuition and Fee process needs ASG because no one school can speak on its own at [the BOG] level,” Harrelson said. “First of all, the President of ASG is the only student able to speak at Board of Governors meetings. Second, even if an individual school were to speak with a Board of Governors member, that school would only represent a fraction of the students in the system.”
Walsh and the senators who support the UNC ASG Removal bill think they can effectively lobby for N.C. State to the General Assembly.
Chancellor Woodson warned student leaders to be careful about withdrawing from ASG.
“You do not want to lose a voice at that table,” Woodson said. “We do need a form of student government that not only serves the campus but also reflects that we are a system and provides a strong voice for students at the Board of Governors.”
At the Feb. 6 Government Operations Committee meeting, graduate student senator Bryan Hoynacke, a graduate student in public administration, said he had spoken with Walsh before the meeting and Walsh said he didn’t want to get involved because there is too much to be done.
“For him, it was so daunting in terms of the changes that need to be made that it was easier to say ‘I’m going to send someone else and hopefully they can figure it out for me,’ because he really does have a lot he is working on on campus,” Hoynacke said.
T. Greg Doucette, alumnus, past N.C. State Student Senate President and two-term ASG President, said it would take some effort to fix ASG, but he said the current leaders haven’t tried at all.
“That’s what is comes down to: laziness and not wanting to deal with confrontation,” Doucette said. “To not attend has nothing to do with ASG sucking. It’s just because you’re f***ing lazy.”
Harrelson also challenged Walsh’s reasoning.
“If they do not trust the organization, then why haven’t they been trying to improve it?” he asked.
Doucette said the ASG had done some good things in the past. In 2008, ASG successfully fought a student tax from the General Assembly that would have put funds into a general fund for the state instead of back to the campuses to benefit students. This effort saved UNC System schools more than $27 million over the course of two years, according to Doucette.
“[ASG] saved [N.C. State] students $157 bucks for students who we haven’t even graduated yet,” Doucette said. “[Students are] still saving money based on what we did [in 2008-2009]. So why would you not go and make sure that happens?”
N.C. State’s Historical Role at ASG
The Union of North Carolina Student Body Presidents was the original name for ASG when it was founded in 1972. Terry Neal Carroll, the N.C. State Student Body President from 1973-1974, served as the first chairman of that body. It was created in response to the creation of the body that unified the then-16 public institutions of higher education into the University of North Carolina system, what we now know as the UNC Board of Governors.
N.C. State’s involvement in the ASG has waxed and waned over the last four decades. The last period of heavy involvement was Doucette’s two terms in office, from 2008-2010. After he stepped down, N.C. State didn’t retain its high position at ASG, and the relationship deteriorated quickly.
Harrelson served as an ASG delegate for two years with Doucette and then as the Speaker Pro Tempore of ASG for 2011-2012. He also served as Student Senate President during 2011-2012, so when ASG came up for debate in the Senate that year, there was tension between pro- and anti-ASG senators.
Student Senate’s last piece of legislation about ASG was the UNC ASG Reformation Act, from the 2011-2012 Senate. The referendum made recommendations to both ASG and Student Senate but was passed during the last Senate meeting that year, and the recommendations weren’t passed on to the next set of student leaders. The bill addressed many of the communication and accountability issues many current student leaders say they have with ASG.
Through his research during his presidential term, Doucette said he noticed a marked reduction in ASG’s effectiveness when N.C. State wasn’t heavily involved.
“When N.C. State is not there, ASG can’t operate as well,” Doucette said. “ASG thrives off of having all 17 institutions. Yes, any one of them can’t show up, but no one benefits when that happens. Most importantly, students don’t benefit.”
Tensions Arise
Many of the current problems with ASG arose in 2010-2012 during Atul Bhula’s two terms as ASG president. Current and past student leaders were critical of the effectiveness of Bhula’s leadership while in office and said he degraded the perception of ASG among students.
“He under assumed the role and didn’t put in the effort,” Doucette said. “It’s the president’s job to articulate the goals for the year. [The president must] come up with something. He was not doing what he needed to be doing as ASG president.”
Interaction between N.C. State Student Government and ASG has not improved since then. Many senators and representatives cited bad past experiences with ASG representatives, Carswell and Kevin Kimball, from the ASG Chief Information Office.
Walsh criticized Carswell’s effort to “go over his head” by calling administrators in the Division of Academic and Student Affairs to complain about his lack of attendance at ASG meetings. Walsh said Carswell eventually did call him, but not before calling at least three DASA administrators.
Gatlin said her experiences with Kimball have been less than impressive. On a couple occasions, she said Kimball has appeared unannounced on campus and requested meetings with student leaders. Gatlin said when student senators asked Kimball about specific ASG actions on behalf of North Carolina college students, he was vague, at best.
“He kind of worded it to where we couldn’t really see anything,” Gatlin said. “Just some words coming out that sounded good.”
UNC ASG Removal Act
The UNC ASG Removal Act is not the first of its kind at N.C. State or at other universities across the UNC System.
Khari Cyrus, a freshman senator and sophomore in biological sciences, is the primary sponsor of the bill. He presented his reasoning behind the bill to the Government Operations Committee and noted the leadership problems with ASG were surprising.
“I don’t see the point of going through ASG to get students’ opinions to the Board of Governors,” Cyrus said.
Alex Parker, a senator for the College of Education and a sophomore in Spanish language and literature, questioned the reasoning behind the act at the Government Operation Committee’s Feb. 6 meeting. He said both faculty members and administrators recognized that the ASG was the only way students could lobby the BOG directly.
Parker was also critical of the wording of the bill.
“It is unfair for us to be comparing mission statements when we aren’t upholding ours,” he said.
Hoynacke questioned it as well.
“How can you suggest [withdrawing from the ASG] if you haven’t gone to the meetings or talked with the ASG members?” Hoynacke asked. “It’s going to hurt us if we pull out in this manner.”
Doucette said it would be bad to withdraw both procedurally and policy-wise. However, he said it was great, politically, for its backers in student government because “people like attacking a faceless organization.”
“People will love to attack ASG, but you know what? Those are the same students who love to attack Student Government, period,” Doucette said. “So by going, ‘Rah rah rah, look at me, I’m abolishing ASG!’ you are legitimizing the idea that you don’t need student self-representation.”
Several student senators advocated taking a more active role in ASG at the Government Operations Committee meeting. In the end, the group held the bill in committee pending revisions and further discussion.
The $1 ASG Fee
The $1 ASG Fee has been another sticking point for student leaders. The BOG enacted the fee in 2002 to offset the cost of student leaders having to pay out-of-pocket to go to meetings, since they are held at a different university each time. The fee also pays for office space and a clerical person and yearly stipends for the executive board positions.
Many student leaders said they feel ASG receives too much money for what it is accomplishing. Possibly reducing the fee has been a recurring topic in student leaders’ discussions.
“We don’t really know what that $1 fee is going toward that we pay every year,” Gatlin said. “It would be more well-received if we knew what they were using that $1 for.”
But Harrelson criticized the student leaders who aren’t engaging themselves in the process.
“[If] the fee is not being used wisely, I think those same student leaders must hold the Association accountable,” Harrelson said.
The $1 ASG fee is one fee out of the $10,119.78 in tuition and fees a full-time, in-state student pays, according to the Cashier’s Office.
The UNC ASG’s website (www.uncasg.org ) has been intermittently accessible for at least three weeks while researching this article and is still down at press time.
Joseph Moo-Young, one of N.C. State’s delegates recognized by ASG and a senior in textile engineering, declined comment for this story.
Cameron Carswell, ASG President and Appalachian State University student, has not responded to email correspondence or interview sent Monday, Feb. 4.