MUSG candidate debate tonight

MUSG President and Executive Vice President candidates will debate on Tuesday, March 25, at 7 p.m. in AMU 163. Students will have the opportunity to pose questions for the candidates to debate. The final election will be held Thursday March 27; students will be able to cast their votes online.

Learn more about the candidates running for MUSG President and Executive Vice President online<http://marquette.edu/musg/electionCandidates.php>.

Communication: Public Safety vs. MUSG

The current MUSG administration has made an issue out of the communication received from Public Safety. They seem to think that there is not enough communication from Public Safety to the students. So much so in fact that Public Safety felt the need to attend an MUSG Senate meeting to defend themselves. (Which I still cannot figure out why any useful Marquette department submits themself to the nonsense of these meetings. But they attended none-the-less.)

At the meeting, Public Safety made a compelling case for all of the items that they do for communication with students, and indeed, there is a lot. In fact, I sometimes think I get too many e-mails from them, and end up deleting many of them. MUSG wants more!

I posed the question to the two MUSG presidential campaigns of who has better communication, MUSG or Public Saftey? Guess what, both think that Public Safety has better communication than MUSG, and I agree. So what is the big fuss about from MUSG, well, rather than focusing on their own issues, they want to get involved in everyone elses and feel high and mighty.

Here is what the candidates had to say about the issue:

Pappalardo and Doerrer:

DPS has much better communication than MUSG right now, but there is a HUGE need for improvement on both fronts. If we get elected, we can improve this communication through monthly meetings with DPS, publishing of the daily crime reports, and others. Regarding MUSG, we need to do more. You've often said that we're a reactive organization and we agree. We need to be more proactive.

Ray and Kathleen:

Public Safety has better communication than MUSG in recent weeks.

• They claim that both have strong and weak points. Ray and Kathleen believe that getting MUSG's ideas out to students is definately lacking.

For more on both campaigns thoughts and plans for communications, see the previous blog entry below.

MUSG Candidates Recognize Lack of Communication by MUSG

Recently I was able to sit down with both sets of candidates for MUSG president among issues that we talked about was the idea of communication. Both campaigns have in some way expressed a need for more communication with students by MUSG. Something that was recongnized by this blog to be missing, and something that clearly MUSG insiders recognized as missing.

Ray and Kathleen have the slogan, "Your choice for your voice" While Pappalardo and Doerrer want to "Putting the student back in student government"

So how do they stand on communication?

Ray and Kathleen:

• Communicate with Bloggers!
• Work closer with clubs.
• Current MUSG forms are too complicated work to fix those.
• Conduct information sessions before Student Organization Allocation deadlines.
• Weekly meetings with members of news outlets.
• Introduce legislation to students: This would be done by MUSG folks sitting outside of the brew and in residence halls.
• Great communication with Public Safety

Pappalardo and Doerrer:

• Communicate with Bloggers!
• Work on communication within MUSG.
• Open MUSG to everyone, not just select few.
• Make minutes of executive board public.
• More emails to students from MUSG.
• Hold Town Hall Style meetings.
• Comment boxes in each residence hall, or University owned appartment building.

While both promised to make more information from the Executive board meetings public, neither could commit to opening these sessions up for anyone to sit in on. An issue that is supremely disappointing to hear. There is absolutely no reason that the Executive meetings need to be closed. There cannot possibly be anything that is discussed that is of grave secrecy to MUSG or the University.

Pappalardo-Doerrer Platform

Recently, I was able to sit down talk with Giuseppe Pappalardo, and Billy Doerrer about their campaign for the MUSG Presidency and Vice-presidency. While I will at a later time put up the comments and conclussions from that meeting. They recently forwarded me their platform. Communication from people in MUSG...this is practly unheard of. The platform follows:
Platform

Our first priority will be to repair the disconnect in communication, this disconnect is three-fold. First is the disconnect between the MUSG Senate and the MUSG
Executive Board. Too often, the Executive Board members will meet with an administrator, address concerns, or reach a conclusion with out informing the Senate. As MUSG Executives, we will work to make the minutes of our Executive Board meetings public and work with Senators to write legislation. The purpose of the Senate is to serve as a medium between the administration, the MUSG Executive Board, and the student body. The second disconnect occurs between MUSG and its constituents. To rectify this void in representation, we propose holding “Town-Hall Meetings” each semester for students to voice concerns directly to Executive Board members. These concerns will be effectively conveyed to the Senate. We will work to install comment boxes in each residence hall and each University owned apartment building to increase dialogue between constituents and their representatives. We also plan to incorporate reports from coordinating councils such as, the Interfraternity Council, National Pan Hellenic Council, and RHA. Finally, we will squeeze every ounce of accountability out of the new website. The third disconnect is between MUSG and the administration. As executives, we will be proactive to creating new and better relationships with the administration while nurturing our existing ones.

Secondly, there is a need for continued efforts to improve the beautification and safety of Marquette University. Residence Halls and off-campus housing are considered to be a part of this great community, yet there is no visible outreach toward some of the outlying portions of campus. Our plan to fix this situation includes making the aforementioned groups feel more at home by working with the University to incorporate them more into the community. In terms of safety, our solid relationships with the Department of Public Safety allow us to hold monthly meetings regarding safety issues, and publicize the daily crime reports. In turn, this will allow MUSG to have an active role in educating the student body to one of its biggest concerns, safety. An educated student is a safer student. We will help foster the community by continuing Marquette University’s initiative to “Go Green”. It costs Marquette three times as much to collect waste than recycling. With tuition on the rise, we will work with University Owned Apartments, off campus housing, and residence halls to improve recycling programs and thus alleviating some of the financial burned placed on the students.

Third, space for Student Organizations is an issue on Marquette’s campus. One reason that there is such a stress on student organization allocations is that organizations and club sports are forced to travel off campus to compete and perform. This travel increases the amount of money that student organizations must have to attend these events, therefore increasing the amount of money that MUSG must allocate. One of the forces that perpetrates this issue is the underutilization of large spaces such as the Old Gym and the Al McGuire Center. Another issue is that over 240 Student Orgs are having difficulty finding meeting spaces. This issue was brought to MUSG last year but was not developed. One of our acts as MUSG Executives would be to create an Ad-Hoc Committee to examine space on campus, and what MUSG, Student Orgs, and the University can do to resolve this issue. Finally, we would like to work with the administration to place the Rec Center on a renovation timetable. Service, one of the pillars of Marquette University is under funded and hard to access on campus. The Office of Community Service is under resourced, and hidden. There are very powerful service organizations on campus that are supported by University Ministry. Part of their difficulties come from not being recognized by the Office of Student Development. This leads to a lack of funding from MUSG and a large burden put on the individual student. This financial burden emplaces a lack of accessibility upon these great organizations. We would like to use the MUSG Reserve Fund, in cooperation with University Ministry and Marquette University Office of Finance to create an endowment to help support one of our pillars. Another problem that University Ministry Organizations face is the additional charges placed on them by the AMU. OSD recognized organizations do not pay for technical support or space rentals in the AMU, University Ministry Organizations do. Our plan would be to work with the AMU to alleviate this specific financial burden.

Finally, Student Organizations need to be better represented on campus. Both of us understand what it means to be a part of an organization and we understand the time and effort put in to making an organization run smoothly. We want to reward the hard work of these orgs by representing them adequately. Both of us sit on the Student Organization Allocation Committee (SOA Committee), meaning that we understand the problems with funding these orgs. The Ad-Hoc committee, chaired by Giuseppe Pappalardo, has proposed a new plan to give more money to student organizations. Together, we will make applications for funding easier and located via the internet. We plan to reestablish positive relationships between MUSG and all organizations on campus.
In a word, we plan to empower students by putting the student back in student
government, reconnecting the disconnects, and giving influence to student
organizations.



Notes
Darfur action
coalition, JUSTICE, faculty

Clearly, this blog is right on track, there is a disconnect between MUSG and the students, and Pappalardo and Doerrer plan on addressing that, among many others.

Endowment good à Ethical Investment Policy

Tribune still Supporting MUSG and its Failed Administration

Through today’s Marquette Tribune, it is clear that The Tribune is a huge proponent of MUSG, and appears to be willing to spin what MUSG does into a fashion to make the student government look admirable. In the past when I attempted to be forthcoming with information about MUSG, The Tribune attempted to censor me, hence why I left them, and I am now writing articles for The Warrior (Look for the first article, in the upcoming issue.)

The article in The Tribune that I am referring to, by Joe Glass is “Banks looks to increase student input.” Banks of course being the president of MUSG, who refuses to talk to any independent student bloggers, or students who blog for the campus newspapers, in an effort to keep students in the dark.

The article states that high ups in MUSG have “in the final months of its administration” been stressing student input. While this may be true as of late, it is somewhat doubtful. They have discouraged students from looking into what they have been up to, for the first major part of the administration, there is absolutely no reason that they should start involving students now. I look for a specific example, but none come to mind.

The article tries to make Banks look like he is encouraging student involvement by requesting, “the addition of non-voting student guests to the university’s board of trustees.” Don’t let this fool you, Brock doesn’t want to get the student involved. He is simply looking to get himself on the board, to feel more important, it is what MUSG people want to do.

The direct quote from Banks was, “Everybody benefits when students are a part of university decision-making.” How exactly he thinks everyone could benefit, I have no idea, it could help to slow things down, by having to have Brock’s opinion on every issue, but other than that, I doubt it would really help anything.

The next issue raised that was really annoying was Brock complaining about the nonrenewal of Sweeney’s lease. When Brock campaigned he told everyone about a great program that he had to help reduce the price of books, Pick a Prof, however, if he is stating that we need Sweeney’s, clearly his program is failing.

The Tribune, in being kind to MUSG, did decide to make it appear as though they have solved all problems but one. It says, “A challenge remaining for the administration is putting the reserve fund, currently at $190,000, to good use.” I agree this is a challenge, but it is one of many challenges remaining; for instance, they need to figure out a way to put all the student’s money to good use, not just that reserve fund.

Shockingly enough too, The Tribune appears to admit that Brock has missed one of his campaign goals of “hosing a spring forum for students to present ideas on how to spend the reserve fund…” Is this one of The Tribunes examples of the administration encouraging student input? Certainly seems the reverse to me.

Another item that Banks appears to have dropped is the idea of lowering the cost of printing double sided from $0.14. No one knows what happened to this idea, he was big on it at the senate meetings for a while, and now it is just gone.

I will offer a full analysis of the Banks presidency as his term comes closer to a close, however, for now, it doesn’t look all that encouraging. Please look for my new article in The Warrior, as it is exclusive to that, and will not being appearing on this website.

MUSG's Pet Organizations

I’ve written before how the Muslim student association, and J.U.S.T.I.C.E. are pet student organizations for MUSG, well now we can add the Arab Student Association to the list. Here is an excerpt from the 11.26.07 MUSG E-List.

Marquette University Student Government After Dark in conjunction with the Arab
Student Association present Arabian Nights on Friday, November 30th from 9
-12
p.m. In the Alumni Memorial Union ballrooms, students can get henna
tatoos, try
on Arab clothing and learn about the style of Arab wiritng. The
event is free
for all Marquette University Students. This is a great
opportunity to learn
about Arabian culture!

I’m sure this is going to be a well attended event, after all, I want to spend 3 hours on Friday trying on Arab clothing and getting a tattoo. Way to go MUSG again at providing an activity that students want. I can’t wait to hear what their next dress up event will be.

MUSG's Hypocracy

At last night's senate meeting, MUSG passed a recommendation that "Marquette University enforce the 25 foot smoking policy." Previous to this, the MUSG senate passed a piece of legislation recommending that "Marquette University reinstate Pizza Shuttle into the MarquetteCASH program."

For those of you who do not know the Pizza Shuttle story, basically, Pizza Shuttle violated their agreement with Marquette earlier this year, and since they broke the rules, Marquette took the action that they said they would if the rule was broken.

So what is MUSG doing? They are recommending that Marquette not enforce some rules (pizza shuttle agreement), while they are recommending that Marquette enforces other rules (smoking 25ft from an entrance). I am curious how the MUSG senate decides which of Marquette's rules, they decide they should enfoce, and which ones they should not. However, even more so, I want to know of all the rules, which ones MUSG actually supports.

It is my recommendation that MUSG take up every rule that Marquette currently has in it's handbook one by one and decided whether or not to recommend enforcement, since essentially this is what they are doing with the smoking legislation.