As reported below, S.A. Finance Committee Chairman Matthew Cohen (SoB-U) and Vice President for Student Affairs Daniel Curran responded to Hunter's and my questions about the proposed fee referendum. I was glad to see that the issues were being addressed, though I was unimpressed by Cohen's and Curran's responses.
I would like to respond briefly to their statements with regard to my question--I leave to Hunter the job of responding to their answers to him.
My question, as quoted on the show:
Instead of voting yourself higher taxes, they now want you simply to vote higher taxes for other people who can't vote in their own interest. What sort of students do they think we are?Had I a transcript, I would quote their remarks, but I do not. The video is available here.
My points in response:
1) I regret the fact that Senator Cohen believed my statement to be too "political" (that is, too concerned with equating the fee to a tax, and too concerned with fighting "big government"). I found it funny, however, that he could deny the governmental nature of the Student Association. At one point, he even claimed that his job was not to "legislate." Bull honkey, Matthew. You run a Senate committee. If you aren't legislating, you aren't doing your job. Like it or not, the S.A. isn't just a feel-good institution designed to help students without risking waste or requiring some trade-offs. The S.A. is not our affable, generous Uncle Phil. It takes our money without our permission. It passes legislation. It holds referendums and elections. It is a government, and we are its constituency. Dismissing my criticism of the S.A. as "missing the point" because it uses the language of politics--taxes, coercion, conservatism, liberalism, limited government--risks forgetting that, for better or worse, the S.A. is political. I find it particularly Orwellian that an elected official and the Chair of a Senate Committee would deny this fact.
2) Vice President Curran makes an interesting point: because of the nature of bureaucracy, passage of any legislation is technically "legislating for future classes." That's true. However, it doesn't take four years for most policy changes to take effect. Also, there's a difference between incidental delays to typical legislation, and delays that are intentionally built into the legislation in order to ensure that it doesn't come into effect for four years. My objection was not to delays per say, but to delays designed to unfairly disenfranchise a group of students.
3) My position is not "glass half empty." It's "glass empty."
4) I realize that Cohen and Curran may have gotten the idea that I am conservative and only oppose the referendum because of some abstract philosophical commitment to low taxes and small government. Given the way I was quoted, this is understandable, though neither of these statements are true. I am not a conservative (though I do have a philosophical commitment to low taxes and small government), and I actually oppose this proposal because I think it's a bad idea. Judging from their statements, Cohen and Curran were unaware that students like me exist.
Beyond these points, I felt that Cohen and Curran did a good job of responding to the argument they wish I had made (that there really is no funding problem--a position I don't hold). How unfortunate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment