Student Government members from various universities signed up for an advocacy and education trip using thousands of dollars from student fee money but neglected to advocate for their peers, Student Senator Courtney Parnell said.
Student Government officials organized the trip that took place Jan. 3 to 6 in Washington, D.C., but the trip was open, for the first time, to other student governments in the UNC school system, said Greg Doucette, president of the Association of Student Governments and Student Senate president. North Carolina’s ASG encompasses 16 universities and the School of Science and Math.
Thirty-seven students and advisers traveled to Washington, Parnell, a senior in biology who went on this year’s and last year’s trips, said. This group included students from eight other universities in the UNC system, Doucette, a senior in computer science, said.
Students across the UNC system, regardless of part- or full-time status, give $1 in student fee money to ASG annually, Senior Class President Adam Compton said. The University allocates an additional $8.85 to Student Government from each student’s fees, Compton said.
“The main mission in the past was to talk to congressmen and anybody who would really meet with us regarding issues at N.C. State,” Parnell said, adding that students lobbied with these certain members of Congress about topics, like textbook prices and tuition caps, that directly affect students.
“This year’s trip just didn’t really seem very planned or organized,” she said. “Many students made the comment that they didn’t know what to talk about when they met with them. And not everybody met with congressmen this year.”
As the largest public university in North Carolina, N.C. State gives $30,000 to ASG annually, according to ASG’s 2009 budget. The association picked up a $6,000 tab that covered the group’s transportation from campus to Washington, the bus driver’s board and a common meeting room in the Homewood Suites hotel, Doucette, a senior in computer science, said.
Students who went on the trip paid $215 up front to cover hotel expenses and paid for their own meals and metro cards, Doucette said.
“If people paid to go and said, F*** it, I don’t want to meet with congressmen, they could do that,” Doucette said. “Everyone that wanted to was given the option to meet with somebody.”
But student fees still covered $6,000 of the total trip’s cost, which Doucette said almost balanced at $15,020.99. N.C. State’s Student Government allotted $1,000 to cover the advisers’ expenses.
Not only do some members of Student Government say they feel student fee money was misused on the trip, Compton said the lack of advocacy “destroys credibility that we worked so hard to build into this trip.”
“The students who have told me that only a handful of the students who went actually met with a member of Congress, that’s really disappointing,” Compton, a senior in agricultural business management, said. “In a lot of ways, it undermines what this trip is really meant to be.”
Compton helped plan Student Government’s advocacy trip for the three years prior to this trip but said he was ousted from the planning committee for this year’s trip when another committee began planning the trip.
Doucette wrote in an e-mail that Compton was replaced because plans were being made too slowly, and said in an earlier interview that although ASG will have to work out kinks from this trip, it was more successful than last year’s trip.
He said ASG’s involvement in the trip, which he said he first proposed as a way to polish the tarnish off ASG’s shaky reputation, came at a time when Student Government needed some polish itself.
“N.C. State was at the risk of being tarnished by the conduct at last year’s trip,” Doucette said, adding that many people who went on the trip did not pay once they got back because of immediate confusion with two officers stepping down from their jobs. “The tour of the White House that was allegedly scheduled was cancelled, so there was a free day on top of the free day.”
But Compton said last year’s trip, as well as the two before it, was a success in that every student who went met with a member of Congress and was briefed on what topics they would lobby for at the meetings.
“This is primarily an advocacy trip to lobby on behalf of N.C. State students to Congress. The second goal of the trip was as an educational opportunity for students interested in politics who have never been to the nation’s capitol,” Compton said. “There have always been a lot of skeptics about this trip. In a lot of ways, this trip has justified what those skeptics have said.”