A proposal was raised at the Associated Students of Oregon State University Senate’s meeting on Wednesday to separate ASOSU-branded services from the student government.
The proposal, written and presented by the ASOSU Office of Advocacy Director Nick North, calls for the creation of two separate sub-units: one for the student government and one for services such as SafeRide, Student Legal Services and Office of Advocacy.
According to a document provided by North, the student government will have its own funding structure that is separate from SafeRide, OA and SLS, but will remain part of the organizational structure.
According to North, the main purpose of the proposal is that the student government, OA, SLS and SafeRide all share the same fund balance.
“What happens in SafeRide affects what happens in Advocacy, (which) affects what happens in student government when it comes to the budget,” North said during his proposal at the meeting.
“So, if one of those subunits has an unexpected expense that they have to cover, it would be up to all the subunits to figure out how to adjust and shift.,” he said.
Additionally, according to the document, the proposal is also about a matter of branding.
“ASOSU is widely recognized as OSU’s Corvallis campus student government,” the document said. “However, the current ‘ASOSU unit’ also includes SafeRide, OA, and SLS. These subunits are also collectively referred to as ‘ASOSU’ creating confusion among students, staff and external stakeholders.”
According to the document, it is not uncommon for students to reach out to OA for issues that should be addressed by the student government or for the student government to be asked about legal issues when they should be directed to SLS.
“The confusion between ‘which’ ASOSU is being referenced is particularly challenging when operational or fiscal decisions must be made,” the document said.
According to the document, ASOSU student government is a student-led body with its own decision-making authority and outlined processes, whereas SafeRide, OA and SLS operate as incidental fee-funded programs with no operational or day to day fiscal decision making from ASOSU student government.
“Although ASOSU student government allocates incidental fees to these programs, SafeRide, OA and SLS function like all other fee-funded units, making their attachment to ASOSU student government branding and unit structure misleading,” the document said.
While ASOSU Provisional President Masha Mogylevsky said the decoupling of the sub-units’ funds was a “good idea”, they implored the Senate to think deeply about this matter.
“I fundamentally agree that all of these services would benefit from having separate fund balances, so that funding is allowed explicitly for one or the other,” Mogylevesky said. “But I feel like this doesn’t fully achieve that goal, because it’s just removing student government and puts the others together. So I feel it doesn’t fully accomplish the goal of the split.”
Performing Arts Liaison to the Student Fee Committee and OA Worker Issy Bare said she is “uniquely familiar” with how the split would affect OA. Bare acknowledged that ASOSU did build OA and would forever be grateful, but being connected to ASOSU impacts OA and that removing ASOSU from their name would benefit them greatly.
Bare pointed to the fact that students don’t always have a positive view of the student government as it “occasionally does have issues” as a reason OA doesn’t want to be associated with ASOSU.
The Senate voted to table the vote on the proposal until the next meeting at 6 p.m., Nov. 12in the Memorial Union 221 and on Zoom.