Editor,
After last year's GPSA debacles, President Christopher Ramirez and Council Chairwoman Lissa Knudsen were overwhelmingly elected on a platform of transparency, accountability and unification.
Yet those words disappeared from the GPSA vocabulary before the ballot boxes were cold. Not even an hour after her appointment, Knudsen secured more than $30,000 in GPSA student fees to fund her latest activism project. While the cause is just, more than half of that money is marked for hiring a private lobbyist, which is a violation of UNM policy. Knudsen has used her position with Council to pass several confrontational resolutions aimed at convincing the regents to reconsider that policy, and Ramirez has circulated a memo in which he states his "unprecedented" refusal to sign those resolutions.
Ramirez may be justified in principle, but a president refusing to enact Council legislation is hardly unprecedented. It was one of many reasons that the GPSA student body attempted to recall former President Joseph Garcia, a recall that was blocked through race baiting, bullying and legislative loopholes by many of the people who now sit on the Ramirez administration.
Transparency, accountability and unification indeed, but while Ramirez may be squaring off against Knudsen and Council, Council is all too willing to fund his irresponsible budget. In addition to Knudsen's pork barrel, GPSA approved more than $17,000 for subcommittee meetings. This includes a stipend for the chairs and $600 per committee for food, under the condescending assumption that financial and gastric bribery, rather than firing absentee chairs, is the only way to motivate a committee. The general fund, which Ramirez refers to as "granny" money, is already dangerously low. And GPSA is not above raising student fees or reducing funding to departmental organizations.
So who is to blame for all of this foolishness? If I had a magical piggy bank that refilled itself once a year, I would probably spend it on my friends, too. Yet the only oversight of student organizations seems to be that they must file a "constitution" that they aren't
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actually obligated to follow. And amazingly, we don't yet have a vice president for the "Office of Keeping GPSA in Line."
In the end, we are to blame. We have allowed GPSA to degenerate into the personal playground of amateur politicians and confrontational extremists who are more concerned with padding their activism résumés and giving stipends to their friends than with doing their job of representing our interests - not to mention our money - to a University that uses GPSA's ineptitude to ignore us. The job of a GPSA representative should be the most sought after in your department, yet only about half of the eligible programs participate with any sort of regularity.
Elect representatives, and hold them responsible for their attendance and for their vote. And if they are ignored, bring allies to the Council meetings and demand to be heard. Change must happen if GPSA is ever to be taken seriously. But it can only happen when we demand it.
Benjamin Mabe
UNM student
